Race Through Time
by Emersonian
Summary: After accidentally reading a spell, Rosetta is transported to the Enchanted Forest and encounters eight pilgrims, one of them being a Batrishan. In Storybrooke, an old acquaintance of Fidget has come for payback. Meanwhile, the Evil One is preparing for his arrival in Storybrooke on the day of his son's annular birthday eclipse.
1. The Lines That You Shouldn't Read

Race Through Time:

The Lines That You Shouldn't Read

It was a very peaceful day of April. The birds were chirping and the sun was shining over the town of Storybrooke, Maine. With such peace going on, one would have assumed that the events that occurred last month with the ancient gods, the heroes of San Angel, and Fidget stealing the Medal of Everlasting Life was nothing but a dream.

Now things had gone for the better: Xibalba had taken the medal back before he, La Muerte, Manolo, and Maria went back to San Angel through a portal. Killian was spending more time with Emma, Henry was dating Violet, the Golds kept an eye on their unpredictable daughter Amanda, and the Romanovs had now given their daughter Rosetta more freedom once they realized that they couldn't hold her away from her fate and powers. As for Fidget the Bat, he exiled himself on a cottage settled at the top of a cliff that bordered the ocean, where he could jump and commit suicide.

But this is Storybrooke, and nothing in this charming little town is supposed to be normal.

On this particular day of April, Rosetta stayed alone in her home while her parents were off at work. Since it was the spring break for kids in Storybrooke, she would be able to do the only thing that pleasured her during holidays when she was alone: sit on the couch in the living room and read a big pile of books that she took from her family's library.

Once she made sure that she was well settled and a cup of hot jasmine tea was settled on the little table near the couch, Rosetta took the first book that was at her disposal. Her eyes beamed when she saw that it was the CANTERBURY TALES from Geoffrey Chaucer. She remembered reading the actual adventures from the actual pilgrims in the Book of Life and how wonderful she found them. She couldn't wait to see what Chaucer wrote as an adaptation.

She opened the book and the first two lines appeared in front of her :

 _When that April with his showers soot_

 _The drought of March hath pierced to the root_

However, before she could read the rest, the page suddenly glowed and the words started to disappear.

"What on earth…" Rosetta began until new golden words appeared and glowed like mounds of gold.

" _The race through time you must take; To when the fate of balance must have begun!"_

Rosetta realized too late that she should have never read those two lines, because she was now blinded by rainbow colors that filled the room with magical light until it took away Rosie.

 _Somewhere in the Underground_

" **After three centuries of waiting, the time is near** ," a dark voice said. The shadowy creature slinked on the balcony of its dark castle as it observed a visual of outer space. What really got the teacher's attention was how near the moon was beginning to approach the Sun.

" **The eclipse will soon come to be. My ultimate success shall befall on Storybrooke. And as the Fates predicted:** _ **the race through fate will be at stake; and soon shall rise the Evil One!**_ "


	2. Enter Eight Pilgrims

Race Through Time:

Enter Eight Pilgrims

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-OOMPH!"

This was probably not the best way to start Chapter Two in Rosetta's opinion, but this is how it ended up with.

After what seemed to be an eternal lifetime of traveling in a rainbow tunnel located in the middle of the universe, she landed rather roughly in what appeared to be a plain of grass. The young demigoddess groaned in pain as she got up and looked around, only to realize that she wasn't in Storybrooke anymore. Instead, she was in some sort of mountain range, with elevated green plateau, and a river flowing eastward. The sky was clear blue with a few hints of white clouds.

"This isn't Storybrooke…" Rosetta realized. "Where…"

"Hey! You there!"

Rosetta turned to see someone heading towards her. At first, it appeared like some man dressed in a red shepherd's outfit and carrying a shepherd's crook, but when the man got closer, it turned out that he had the head and tail of a brown shepherd dog with an old man's white hair. Rosetta somewhat felt nervous because this man had partial animal features, but also calm because of the fact that she was used to humanoid animals like Fidget and her father was the god of jackals.

"Are you alright, lad?" the shepherd asked in a very kind voice. "We saw you falling from the sky through what appeared to be a portal."

"We?" asked Rosetta.

"Forgive me, my child. I forgot that this might be an overwhelming moment for you. What is your name?"

"Uh…Rosetta."

"Lovely. My name is Aaron and I'm a Parson."

Right when Aaron mentioned that he was a Parson, a series of flashback occurred to Rosetta. She had read about the adventures of pilgrims in the Book Of Life. Right before she got dragged in the mystical portal, she was reading a frame tale about pilgrims.

"You…wouldn't happen to be heading for the Canterbury Shrine?" she asked. Aaron's eyes widened.

"Why…yes," he said. "Are you?"

"I'm..." Rosetta looked around. "Frankly, I'm not really sure why I'm here. All I know is that I was reading this book called CANTERBURY TALES that told the story about diverse people going on a pilgrimage to a mystical shrine in Canterbury…and then for some reason, the book began glowing and…I ended up here."

"You wouldn't happen to come from the Land Without Magic, my child?" Aaron asked, as he sat down on a nearby rock.

"You've been there?"

"I haven't, but I'm familiar with the stories of the Evil Queen's Dark Curse, a kingdom going to another world without magic before returning thirty years later and going to that other world…again. You'd be surprised by the number of minstrels I've encountered telling me all those stories."

"I got transported from the Enchanted Forest with my parents to that other world the second time. How come you didn't?"

"Not everything can be affected by curses like the Dark Curse." Aaron waved his crook around, showing the highlands that surrounded them. An eastern wind blew in his and Rosetta's hair. "These highlands are the Eastern Highlands. They are so far away from the Evil Queen's Castle that the powerful magic of her curse can't reach it without succumbing to neutrality."

"You're not telling me that you spend thirty-one years ditching a curse just by staying in these endless highlands?" Rosetta asked, beginning to panic.

"No, we spent a year walking through this endless highlands," a new voice entered. Another person appeared, only this time, it was a man with a pink pig's head dressed in a blue reeve's outfit with a small leather satchel attached to his side. "Aaron, who is that human?"

"It's only a child, Isaac," Aaron said.

 _OK, this is getting weird,_ Rosetta told herself. _A pig-headed reeve named Isaac. And to think that about half a year ago, we were dealing with a crazy man named Isaac Heller who tried to imprison everyone in Storybrooke into an alternate universe._

"You mean a human child who just fell from the sky through some portal," Isaac the Pig Reeve replied rather rudely. "If it turns out, she's one of Darwin's lackeys!"

"Evolution must really be underrated with snouty mammals," Rosetta said sarcastically. Isaac's eyes popped open with injured pride while Aaron laughed at Rosetta's remark.

"You really are a hilarious one, my young one," he said. He looked above his head and saw grey clouds beginning to form in the sky. "God's tears might fall upon us. Come, Rosetta. We can't leave you out here in these deserted highlands on a rainy night while you could be by a warm fireplace with us."

"Aaron, are you mad?" Isaac exclaimed as Aaron got up and put a gentle hand on Rosetta's shoulder, walking with her up a cliff. "We can't let some stranger camp with us!"

"Have a heart, Isaac. Where else can she go in these vast highlands? Besides, the choice will also go to our fellow pilgrims."

The three of them walked up the cliff until they reached the top, where six other animalistic people were setting up camp. One of them, a swan dressed in a grey prioress' outfit, saw her two fellow pilgrims approaching with an unknown human child.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed when she saw that Rosetta was beginning to shiver. She quickly walked to her (Rosetta noticed that the prioress had a swan's webbed feet) and took off her long grey cape before putting it over Rosetta's shoulder. "Who could leave such a sweet child in the middle of the Eastern Highlands?"

"This is Rosetta," Aaron said, which got the attention of the other five pilgrims, who quickly abandoned their posts in order to gather around Aaron, Isaac, and Rosetta. "She accidently got transported here from the Land Without Magic."

"The Land Without Magic?" a man with a barn owl's head (with actual reading glasses!) dressed in a black clerk's robe with red sleeves asked. "I assume you were a victim of the Evil Queen's curse."

"During the second one," Rosetta admitted.

"Fascinating!" the owl said in glee.

"Back to reality, Maurice!" Isaac snapped his fingers. "Aaron thinks that we should let the human girl camp with us and that we must all vote on it."

"She has a name, you know!" Eglantine scolded Isaac. "I vote that Rosetta stays with us for a while."

"I agree with Eglantine," Maurice said. "Besides, we could learn a lot about the world she comes from."

"I'm not very sure," a brown bear-headed monk said. "We've been traveling in these highlands for a year and we are close to reaching their border. Is it a coincidence that Rosetta arrived at the same time?"

"So you're neutral, Harry?" Aaron asked. Harry nodded.

"I'm going to go with Harry," a six-armed spider (standing on two legs) dressed in a grey tank top, teal pants and handcuff bracelet, and black boots, said. "I'm just the mechanic here."

"So Harry and Dwight are neutral," Aaron said. "Eglantine, Maurice, and I are positive. Isaac is negative. We have two more to go. Anaïs?"

Anaïs was a Wife of Bath and quite a fat hippo. She wore a cream-colored turtleneck, a long blue skirt that didn't hide much of her weight, a yellow belt, red socks, and black shoes and hat. A gapped tooth could be seen sticking out of her mouth.

"I don't trust strangers," she simply said in a gruff voice.

"You chose to travel with seven complete strangers when we offered you the opportunity to go to Canterbury," Eglantine said, giving an angry glare at Anaïs.

"Well, I vote that she stays."

All eyes turned on a man who could have been in his early twenties. He was very handsome with his tan skin, sandy blonde hair, sharp black eyes, red-and-white squire shirt, purple trousers, black belt with golden claps, and brown tan boots. But it wasn't his handsomeness that made her look in complete shock.

"You…you…are…a Batrishan?" Rosetta stammered.

"A Batrishan, that I am," he said. "Tristan the Squire. Pleased to make your acquaintance."


	3. Trouble In Storybrooke

Race Through Time:

Trouble In Storybrooke

The door of Mr. Gold's pawnshop opened and David and Emma stepped in, ignoring the sound of the usual bell. They walked towards the counter, where Mr. Gold and Belle, who was holding her sleeping baby Amanda, were waiting for them.

"You called us?" David asked.

"Yes, but mostly for Emma," Mr. Gold said. He pulled out something from his jacket and placed it on the counter: David and Emma were surprised to see Pandora's Box again after what happened one month with the Aztec gods and the heroes of San Angel. "You remember when we freed Xibalba and Manolo from this little thing?"

"How can't we?" Emma said.

"What exactly are you trying to say about it?" David asked. To answer his question, the ex-Dark One turned the box backwards and revealed a purple light flashing on and off like a bicycle's warning light in the middle of the night.

"We just saw this light today while I was cleaning the shop," Belle explained. "Apparently, it's been flashing for a month, but we haven't noticed it before."

"What does it mean?" Emma asked apprehensively.

"It means that the last time we opened the box, one of its…contained evils took the liberty of illegally escaping," Mr. Gold answered. "The box only grants liberty to its prisoners if someone from the outside world intentionally desired to free them. This was the case for when we freed Henry-in-Pan's-body, Manolo, and Xibalba: we desired to free them. _But_ , we can't free something or someone whom we don't desire to be freed."

"In other words, while we were 'legally' freeing Manolo and Xibalba last month, something or someone took the liberty of illegally escaping," David concluded.

"Exactly," Belle said. "And apparently, unless it's returned to the box before the sun sets in thirty days, whatever escaped will be permanently freed from the box and will never be able to be put back inside ever again."

"So we…" David began saying until the door burst open and Anubis and Marion Romanov, along with two hounds, came in.

"ROSETTA'S MISSING!" they exclaimed in unison.

"Again?" the other four adults exclaimed. The screaming woke up Amanda, who cried in Belle's arms.

"I'd better go back home to take care of Amanda, Rumple," Belle said.

"I agree with you," Rumple kissed his wife. "Be safe and keep an eye on our daughter." The latter nodded and she left through the back, taking their baby with her.

"What do you mean, your daughter's missing?" David asked the newcomers.

"One of my hounds rushed to my shop saying that Rosie disappeared from the mansion after some 'lights' came into the living room. When Marion and I rushed back home, all we saw was the couch full of books, a spilled cup of tea on the floor, and no Rosie," Anubis said.

Emma pondered a bit before an idea hit her and she pulled out her phone and began dialing. "I might have a pretty good idea of who we should suspect first."

 _Later on, on a cliff that bordered the ocean_

The waves were crashing on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, making rough, thunder like noises. The cool wind blew from the west above the dull green grass where a small, pale stoned cottage was located, with a small road leading to the woods right behind it. And just at the peak of the cliff stood Fidget the Bat, with a telescope in hand, observing the sky.

He didn't like what he was seeing: the moon was very slowly but surely approaching the sun daily, and if Fidget was correct based on the math he learned in astronomy back in the old days, there would be an annular eclipse on the next fourteenth of August, which was his actual birthday. Legends told about an eclipse that came every three hundred years and brought unimaginable darkness with it. And Fidget's 300th birthday was going to be on the same day of the eclipse's arrival.

 _So much for coincidences_ , he thought.

He noticed that his wristwatch was indicating four o'clock; Rosetta should be arriving anytime soon for their usual Tea Thursdays. He put away his telescope and began walking back to his cottage, only to see cars pulling at the bottom of the road and walking towards his cottage. He squinted in confusion until he noticed that one of them was none other than the codfish he hated the most.

"Fitzgerald," Killian said quietly as he arrived in front of the cottage's patio with Emma Swan, her father, Rosetta's parents' and a couple of Anubis' hounds, who growled at the Batrishan.

"I didn't recall inviting you over, codfish," Fidget said drily.

"I know, Fitzgerald. But there's been a…few events going on in Storybrooke that seem to put you on the suspect list."

"Always blaming me for your problems."

"Look, we'll just make it clear!" Emma snapped. "Did you kidnap Rosetta again and are you aware that something escaped from Pandora's box?"

The Batrishan's head perked up when he heard the mention of Rosetta. "Rosetta's missing?"

"Don't play another one of your games, Fidget!" David said.

"I'm not!" the Batrishan said defensively. "I swear on the River Styx that I have nothing to do with whatever happened to Rosetta!"

Anubis looked up to the sky to see if anything happened for a few seconds. He looked quite surprised when he said: "The Batrishan is honest. He doesn't know what happened to my daughter."

"Are you sure?" Emma asked skeptically.

"He swore on the River Styx," Marion said. "The punishment for those who lie when they swore to tell the truth on that powerful river is instant electrocution through lightning."

"So you don't know what happened to Rosetta?" Killian asked Fidget.

"I'd be dead by now if I did," the Batrishan frowned. "Looks like this justifies why she isn't here for tea…"

"Why would Rosetta come to _your_ house for tea?" David asked.

"Because we do Tea Thursdays," Fidget replied.

"So that explains why Rosetta comes back home late from school every Thursday even though they have early release," Marion pinched her nose in exasperation. "Remind me to have a discussion with her once we find her."

"And what about Pandora's Box?" Killian said. "Did you release whatever came out of it?"

"The only I've done with Pandora's Box was back in the Enchanted Forest during the days where I imprisoned 100 villains, Xibalba being one of them, as part of a deal with the Dark One," Fidget answered.

"Let's do it another way," Anubis said. "Do you have any involvement with the box currently?"

"In Styx's name, I have nothing to do with it." Some sort of grey light coming from Anubis' tuxedo followed the Batrishan's words. The god pulled out what appeared to be a feather made of gold, only it was flashing with grey. "I didn't know you possessed one of Maat's feathers of truth."

"I hardly use it," the god admitted. "But I brought it with me just in case. It's grey light means that you are half lying and half telling the truth."

"I didn't touch that blasted box while it was in this town!"

"You didn't. That's the part where you didn't lie. However, you were somewhat involved with the thing that escaped from the box. That's the part where you 'lied'." Anubis air-quoted the word 'lie' while realization hit the Batrishan's face.

"One of the villains I locked in the box escaped. And he or she is after me."


	4. The Thing That Escaped The Box

Race Through Time:

The Thing That Escaped The Box

"This is what you saw when you realized that something escaped the box?" Fidget asked as he examined the flashing light on Pandora's box. Thirty minutes after the heroes came to his cottage to question him, he 'willingly' followed them to see the box and figure out what was the thing that left it.

"I don't suppose you have any idea of what was the thing or villain that escaped?" David asked as he leaned on the counter. The Batrishan sniffing the box, which kind of surprised the others.

"All I can tell right now is that it has the aura of a female," Fidget groaned. "I am _so_ busted."

"I must admit, Denada Cortés," Mr. Gold said, "I lost track of the identities of the 100 villains that you locked in the box for that bargain of ours. How many of them were females?"

"Many of them whom I had to use brutal force. Others had me chained to their beds with my clothes off."

"Funny. Why does that sound familiar to how you and I first met?" Marion asked Anubis.

"Because if I hadn't chosen you, you would have most likely been like this in the sex slave market," Anubis joked, only to get a dark look from his wife.

"Oh-kay, we'll discuss your true-love-at-firs-sight history later!" Emma cut in. She gave a slightly disturbed look at the god and his wife.

"The second one seems a bit…" David began telling Fidget.

"Weird? Disgusting?" Fidget offered.

"I was going for unusual."

"For a human like you, it's kind of understandable. But you'd be surprised by the number of non-humans who find me quite attractive." At that, he teasingly stroke his hair in a way that would have mocked all the narcissists in the universe. Now that they had another look at him, most of the humans realized that Fidget's remark wasn't really a lie: despite the wings (one of them having a mechanical brace), the right peg-leg, the fanged teeth, the bloody red irises in golden eyes, the bat ears, and the clawed hands, Fidget the Bat did have a level of handsomeness. He kept his long, dark as an abyss hair neatly cleaned and brush. His dark skin was well scrubbed, his claws even but sharp, his teeth brushed, etc. He wore proper, modern black and purple clothes that still made a callback to the Aldoradian military uniform that he used to wear back in the old days.

No doubt about it: if Evil wanted to reincarnate its cruel handsomeness in a handicapped Batrishan who lived through nightmares for almost three centuries, it did a good job for choosing Fitzgerald Denada Cortés as its host.

"So, what do we do now?" Killian asked. "We know that the thing…or person who escaped the box is female and is after Fidget for revenge. But how do we catch it?"

"Well, for one it or she will most likely come after the Batrishan," Mr. Gold said as he pointed the Batrishan, who rolled his eyes in return. " It or she will probably leave by any sign that it or she is looking for his attention."

"And my head," the Batrishan muttered.

"Look who's the person being targeted for revenge now?" David smirked.

"Please shut up, mate," Killian told David in a firm way that he wanted to avoid conflict. Fidget gave a surprised glance at the pirate who used to be his old friend.

"I could send my hounds to track down the scent," Anubis suggested. "Just let them sniff the box and they might find it in less than a minute."

"Can they?" Emma asked.

"They sniffed your car seat twice in order to get _your_ scent," Marion said drily.

"Maybe sniffing won't be necessary." All eyes turned on the Fidget, who was looking at a model of a miniature ship inside a bottle. He grabbed it and had a closer look at it. "Codfish, I'm going to have to use your ship."

"You have a plan?" Killian asked with a hopeful tone in his voice.

"Better." The Batrishan grinned, revealing his fanged grin that made everyone, including Anubis, cringe. "A booby trap."

 _Meanwhile, in the forest surrounding Storybrooke_

Several hills away from the pawnshop, several feet away from the Toll Bridge, and several miles before you could reach the town line, a purple smoke was floating in midair, figuring out how to appear as a living creature of flesh and bones. The smoke needed to find a body. It must seek its revenge!

As the smoke hovered above an empty plain, it spotted an abandoned magazine from some abandoned picnic. Curious, the smoke got closer to the magazine, which turned to be a VOGUE magazine, and flipped around the pages until it found a page with an interesting picture of a woman in an interesting jumpsuit outfit. Pleased with what it saw, the smoke suddenly twisted like a tornado and let out a few wind blows that eventually transformed into a woman's scream.

The smoke eventually disappeared, revealing a young woman who could have been eighteen at the least. She looked at her hands and gasped when she saw that they were violet colored and that their delicate fingers all had rings with pink eight-pointed stars. She moved these hands over her face and felt a heart shaped head with a small nose. She snapped her fingers and a vanity appeared after a smoke full of eight-pointed stars and purple cosmos appeared.

The sight was amazing! She saw the reflection of a beautiful woman with long, purple, pink, and black hair that flowed down to her waist and were crowned with a headband that sprouted a silver colored horn. Her eyes were cold blue with small, pink irises. The woman wore a black jumpsuit that exposed a lot of cleavage underneath a violet leather jacket, a purple belt with an eight-pointed star shaped clasp, and violet ankle strapped shoes with little wings attached to the back. Her neck was decorated with a purple stringed necklace with a pink eight-pointed star pendant, which looked a lot like the loop earrings she was wearing.

"Something is missing," she muttered in a dark, yet sweetly seductive voice. She shut her eyes and focused hard. Pained flowed throughout her spine until something sprouted from the bones. Once the pain ended, the woman looked at the mirror again and was pleased to see dark feathered wings wide open and attached to her back.

"So much better," she said. She looked away from the mirror and looked at the small trail that led through the woods and into the small town. "And now, for what you did to me, Fitzgerald Denada Cortés…"

She punched the vanity mirror, causing the entire glass to break into shards that landed on the grass.

"I shall have you heart," the woman said as she caused the glassless mirror to disintegrate. She walked towards the trailer, swaying her hips in the process, and cackled wickedly as the first rays of sunset reflected on the shards, revealing that they were all forming the shape of an eight-pointed star.


	5. Campfire Stories

Race Through Time:

Campfire Stories

"Thank you for helping me set up the tents, Rosetta," Dwight said once he and Rosetta had set up the pup tents.

"Your welcome," she said with a small, but sincere smile. The pilgrims were kind enough to spare some of their extra camping supplies for Rosetta despite the fact that she just recently joined the group. For some reason, Rosetta felt comfortable around the pilgrims. _Maybe it's because they haven't treated me like a helpless little girl yet_ , she thought.

Nighttime had fallen above the Eastern Highlands. The pilgrims were all doing something to keep themselves busy. Maurice was consulting a map he possessed, Eglantine was helping Aaron tend to his herd of sheep, Isaac was counting his money, Anaïs was going back and forth from and to the river in order to fetch water, and Harry was tending the campfire while Tristan cooked dinner for everyone. Dwight and Rosetta went to sit by the campfire in order to get warmed up by the flames.

"It's impressive how you can multitask with six arms," Rosetta commented as she watched Dwight the Tapiser stretch his arms and hands all at once in less than a minute.

"Thank you. It's nice to hear people appreciate my skills rather than run away screaming because of my sight," he said, slightly glum. Rosetta felt bad for the Tapiser: who knew how often he must have dealt with arachnophobic people?

"So, you all have known one another for thirty-one years?" she asked, changing the topic.

"Thirty-five, actually," Dwight said. "We're aware of the Evil Queen's Dark Curse and the others that followed it. Being as far away from the curse saved us from being cursed ourselves; however, the side effect is that we didn't age for close to three decades as if time stopped. Mark my words, we'd be much older than we are right now. Heck, Aaron would be dead by now."

Rosetta quickly glanced at the shepherd dog parson as fed a cute lamb with a bottle of milk. She didn't want to imagine the pilgrim who had been nice to her from the beginning dying.

"And how did you exactly all meet? I don't suppose you came from the same town or something…" Based on what she read from Chaucer's version and the Book of Life's interpretation, the pilgrims were supposed to be from different areas around the world.

"It actually began with Maurice." Dwight pointed one of his numerous fingers at the owl clerk, who was still busy doing calculations and observing his map. "He came from a multi-species city in the northeast and worked in an 'Oxford library' as he called it. One day, he found an old manuscript that told the legends of the Canterbury Shrine, a place so magical that it was said to be able to solve any individual's problem.

"Maurice then spent days and nights researching for more information about the shrine until one fateful day, he finally found a map leading to the shrine in a sorcerer's shop. Our dear old clerk then left his home to go seek out the shrine."

"And what a trip it was!" Maurice suddenly said as he went to sit by the campfire and joined the storytelling. "I rode my horse for days and nights, only stopping at a few inns when it was really necessary. Then, two months after I left my home, I arrived in some small town…"

"DON'T YOU DARE, MAURICE!" Isaac shouted, losing his attention from his money. His raise in vocal volume caught the attention of the other pilgrims, who lifted their heads away from their chores.

"What?" Maurice said, faking innocence. "It's when I met you in Nottinghamshire. You used to manage the land of the local lord, what was his name again? Rawhill?"

"Rushcliffe," Isaac corrected impatiently. "And at least _I_ made a living as a reeve, you know! Managing lands and collecting taxes for his Highness Prince John…"

"What about dirt?" Rosetta asked drily. "Did you collect that as well?" Isaac's pig face blushed in angered embarrassment while the other pilgrims laughed at Rosetta's joke.

"That was a good one!" Harry said in an accent that sounded Russian. The Reeve looked like he wanted to hit the Monk until Maurice went back to the story.

"So I arrived in town and I ran into Isaac, who mistook me for this miller who was in debt and needed to pay a month's worth of taxes," Maurice continued. "It went into this public bickering: 'Pay up your taxes, miller!' 'I beg your pardon, sire, but I am not a miller. I'm a clerk.' 'Sure. You told me three weeks ago that you'd pay up your shillings for tax collections, and then the week after that, you said you were halfway into paying. It's been a month now and you still haven't paid!'"

"Then came the part where I called the Sheriff and had Maurice thrown in jail," Isaac said, "only for me to meet the actual miller coming to my house with a bag full of the money he owed me. He meant to bring it to me earlier, but he got drunk while spending the night at a local tavern. Plus, I found out he sold his mill and possessions in order to pay up…"

"You then came to the Sheriff's station and managed to convince the Sheriff to let me go," Maurice said, resting a feathered hand on Isaac's shoulder. "And you joined me on the quest to find the shrine of Canterbury."

"Wow. Ya forgave him that easily?" Anaïs snorted. "Even though he was da reason ya were thrown in jail?"

"Give them a break, Anaïs!" Eglantine scolded the hippo before bringing everyone back to the topic. "Then, after Maurice met Isaac, they traveled for several months until they reached Glowerhaven…"

"Not too far from the Chihuahan Desert?" Rosetta blurted out, remembering that San Angel was located in the desert and the desert was a thousand miles away from Glowerhaven. Perhaps if she could manage, she could try to reach the desert and find the town, where she could try to locate Xibalba and La Muerte and ask them to send her back to Storybrooke…

 _Don't be stupid, Rosetta! The Eastern Highlands are in the far east of the Enchanted Forest and the Chihuahan Desert is on its far opposite!_ She mentally scolded herself.

As if reading her thoughts, Eglantine said: "You know, if you desperately need to go to the Chihuahan Desert, you could join us in our quest to find the shrine of Canterbury and it can help you go to your location."

Rosetta's face brightened. "Really? Then…could the shrine send me back to my home?"

"Most likely," Maurice said. "After all, the shrine can grant any individual's problem."

"Why didn't I think about that?" In less than a blink, the now excited Rosetta was hugging Maurice. The clerk was a bit surprised but genuinely returned the gesture. "Thank you so much!"

"Now hold it!" Isaac said. "How do we know for sure that she's not gonna turn on us once we arrive at the shrine?"

"You really are pathetic, Isaac," Tristan shook his head as he began handing out bowls full of cooked beans to his fellow pilgrims. "Can't you see she's just a little girl who wants to go home?"

"Come to think about it, I might get in serious trouble once I go back," Rosetta pondered. "How far is the shrine from here?"

"Glad you asked." Maurice held out the map he had been studying earlier and showed it to the others. "We should be able to leave the Eastern Highlands for good in less than two days. After that, we only have some sort of unknown wasteland to cross in order to reach the shrine of Canterbury. Overall, it should take us a week or two to get there."

"Wow. Mommy's seriously gonna ground me." A realization hot Rosetta and she slapped her head. "Dang it! I forgot that I was supposed to have Tea Thursday with Fidget today. Hopefully he'll forgive me…"

"Who's Fidget?" Harry asked as he greedily gobbled into his bean meal.

"Well, his nickname is Fidget the Bat, but his full name is actually Fitzgerald Denada Cortés…"

"Oh, I heard that name! He used to be a Navy Sergeant for the Queen of Aldorada before the nation crumbled over centuries ago. He was a legendary warrior, but he somehow disappeared."

"Wait," Aaron said. "What do you mean, the nation of Aldorada crumbled?"

"Well, you see, the Denada Cortés family has had a legacy of incredible military officers. No war fought by Aldorada has ever lasted long with a Denada Cortés on the field. The General Hernan Denada Cortés was known for leading armies to victory in less than a week, but legends say that his son did so in less than _a day_. Put him on the field and he could strike ten men all at once with only one swish of his sword." Harry then turned to Rosetta. "But how is it possible that he's still alive and in your world? By now, he could be like 300 years old."

"That's pretty old," Tristan commented as he took a bite of his meal. "I can picture the wrinkles right now."

"Hey, he doesn't have wrinkles!" Rosetta said defensively. "I mean, sure he's been a jerkass for a bit due to some misunderstanding that made him want to seek power in order to get revenge on some pirate, but he's not horrible physically and emotionally at every second. All he has that's not very pretty is a notched ear, a peg leg, and a crooked wing…"

"A crooked wing?" Eglantine asked, confused. "Isn't Fitzgerald Denada Cortés human?"

"Legends say he's a non-human like most of us," Harry said before turning to Rosetta. "Isn't he, Rosetta?"

"Well, yeah." Rosetta began to feel sweat rolling down her head for some reason. "I mean, until now it was believed that he was the last of his kind…that is…until I saw Tristan today."

Tristan was the first to spit out the beans from his mouth. Next thing you knew, he was grabbing the little girl by the throat, nearly choking her as his black eyes glared at her.

"Fitzgerald Denada Cortés…" he asked angrily, "is… _a Batrishan…_ **AS OLD AS THE BATRISHAN GENOCIDE?** "


	6. A Sparkle At Midnight

Race Through Time:

A Sparkle At Midnight

The night sky was covering the town of Storybrooke like a blanket of darkness and stars at 9:30pm.

"So we all know the booby trap?" Fidget asked through his phone as he stood on the main deck of the JOLLY ROGER. "I stand here in the open looking like an idiot, and when the 'thing' comes…"

"Emma and I jump out of our hiding spots and bring this thing down if it starts aggressing you," Killian said as he hid behind his slightly open cabin's door, allowing him to have both a good hiding spot and a good visual of the main deck. Emma, meanwhile, was hiding behind a stack of barrels placed on the other side of the ship. She nodded in silent agreement.

"And if the thing manages to escape…" Fidget started saying.

"Mr. Gold and I got it covered," David said. He and the ex-Dark One were place in two different parts of the port where the JOLLY ROGER was located. David was placed in his car, keeping an eye on things with his binoculars. He briefly spotted Mr. Gold up ahead. The latter was sitting on a bench and pretending to read a newspaper despite the dark while he was actually hiding his gun.

"And if plan B doesn't work?" Fidget pressured on.

"We got at least twelve hounds spread throughout the town," Marion said while she was perched on top of the Storybrooke clocktower, with her crossbow ready, while Anubis observed the streets from inside the clocktower with binoculars. "If the thing manages to escape from the docks, the closest hounds will start chasing it."

"Okay then!" Fidget clapped his hands together. "Let's get started with the most boring part: we wait."

They then proceeded in waiting, but the more they waited, the more nothing else came. Fidget stood on the main deck, looking at the sky in the hopes of seeing something. At 10pm, he began using his claws to carve doodles on the mast.

"Careful, Fitzgerald," Killian said. "That mast is made of very rare wood."

"Like I care," Fidget replied stiffly.

At 11pm, he proceeded in playing a game of Tetris on his phone until he was almost out of battery.

"Any signs so far?" Marion asked in a tired voice.

"None," Emma yawned through her phone. "Sorry."

"It's OK. I do feel like going to bed right now."

Time flew until it was nearly midnight and there was still no sign of the thing. Fidget facepalmed himself in frustration at the thought of his plan possibly failing. "What made me come up with a plan like this?" He walked around the main deck, clomping his peg led on the wooden floor. Finally, when the clock stroke twelve, his frustration increased.

"That's it! I give up!" he shouted at the sky. Just as he said that, he saw a dark shape heading straight towards him. Seeing how fast it was approaching him, Fidget jumped out of the way, slightly getting hit by the energy waves that the thing's trajectory emitted. It caused him to fall on the deck, for the cabin door to shut completely on Killian, unabling to open it, and for Emma to get squished by the barrels. Fidget struggled to get up, which was one of the disadvantages of walking on a peg leg. His chest slightly hurt and when he looked down, he saw that the energy waves caused by the thing created a big slash on his shirt, revealing his bare, dark muscular torso. Knowing that the thing that just attacked him was far more important than his ruined clothing, Fidget prepared himself to face his adversary. He began grabbing the handle of his sword…

"Put that sword down, Fitzgerald."

The Batrishan froze at the sound of the voice, which sounded very familiar…as if he new the voice's owner from back in the Enchanted Forest. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman appeared before him. At first, with the outfit she was wearing, he could have mistaken her for one of those models in a VOGUE magazine, but he just had to see her violet skin, her purple-pink-and-black hair, her cold blue eyes with purple irises, and the eight-pointed star motif all over her, to recognize her.

"Midnight Sparkle?" he gasped. "You…you escaped from Pandora's Box?"

"Where else?" Midnight Sparkle asked as she began to walk towards Fidget, her hips swaying in the process. Fidget instantly held out his sword, but she managed to kick it halfway across the deck until it landed on the cabin's door and Killian nearly felt the tip of the blade on the other side. "Quite a noisy place to be it was. I've almost forgotten what it was like to be just two individuals, alone in the dark, so close to one another…" She had walked so close to the Batrishan that he tried to backup, which only led him to the mast. Fidget was now cornered, with his back and wings glued to the mast and Midnight now hardly an inch away from him.

"I told you back then that I wasn't interested," he tried to answer flatly. "My affections belong to someone else!"  
"Your human princess has been dead for centuries, Fitzgerald," Midnight kept saying, her voice getting creepily seductive and her hand placing itself on his bare chest before her fingers began to walk upwards until they reached his cheek. "But I'm alive. Finish that seduction you made to me all these decades ago. You and I will be together…forever."

"I did it because there was no other way for me to put you in that box! And don't even think that you can replace Isabella!"

"Perhaps. But this can replace all the physical emotions she ever gave you." Her dark lips then crushed onto Fidget's while he struggled to get them off his as she kept inserting through his mouth.

"Get-mmph! Off-mmph! Me-mmph!" He tried to scream but got interrupted by her lustful kisses. "K-mmph! KILLIAN!"

The cabin door burst door open and Killian dashed out of the deck, his sword aiming for Midnight as she pulled away in surprise from a now-traumatized looking Fidget.

"BACK AWAY FROM MY FRIEND!" the pirate shouted.


	7. Reminder Of The Past

Race Through Time:

Reminder Of The Past

Midnight Sparkle yelped in pain when Killian managed to strike her severely on her left shoulder. Her hands let go of Fidget in order to defend herself from the pirate; the Batrishan fell on the deck, prompting Emma to kick the barrels of her and rush to aid the Batrishan, who was still traumatized from Midnight's lustful kisses. While she held him by one arm, she used the spare one to summon a ball of light magic and held it up in the air.

"We're warning you!" Emma told Midnight. "If you dare to make another move..."

"You're not going to warn me anything!" Midnight spat as she sprouted her dark feathered wings open and used her hands to summon a large cloud of smoke full of eight-pointed stars and purple cosmos that filled the deck. While Killian and Emma were busy coughing and covering their eyes from the cloud, Midnight took the opportunity to fly into the dark sky.

"Don't think this is over, Fitzgerald!" she shouted. "I will have your heart!"

 _The next day_

The heroes went to see Fidget while Dr. Whale was healing him in the morning. Killian spent the entire night in the hospital room where they kept his old friend, watching as his friend was put in a temporary coma. There was no doubt that he was sincerely concerned about the fate of Batrishan.

"I gave him a pill that should wake him anytime soon," Dr. Whale said when Emma, David, and Mr. Gold came to check up on Killian and Fidget while Anubis, Marion, and their hounds went scouting in the hopes of finding Midnight and perhaps Rosie as well.

"Thanks, Doctor," Killian said gratefully. The doctor nodded and left the room.

"Wow, you...really care about Fidget, don't you?" David said as soon as Dr. Whale had closed the door.

"Why wouldn't I?" Killian said. "He was the closest thing to a best friend and brother I had other than my own brother Liam. We've both endured similar situations..."

"You mean such as losing the love of your lives, getting severely handicapped, and seeking eternal youth just for the sake of revenge?" Mr. Gold pointed out. "Because believe me, he did a lot worse than you have, pirate. When it came to immortality, he took an option that cost him whatever humanity and love he had, and has for invincibility, he made deals with five immortals, two of them being me and Cora."

Emma cringed at the thought of their first conflict against Fidget: he had claimed to have been Cora's apprentice and learned magic from her for five years and from what he did using his powers ever since he put his foot and peg leg in Storybrooke, Emma could tell that he had learned well. But what really haunted the Savior was when he had ripped out Henry's heart and forced him to injure Emma in order to obtain her blood. Back then, she was defenseless, no matter what the Batrishan did. She couldn't even protect her own son from him.

She was cut away from her thoughts when David asked out loud: "So does anyone have any idea of what kind of villain Midnight Sparkle is? Gold, don't you know anything?"

"Well, I've heard of stories back in the Enchanted Forest about an alicorn living in a cave who 'led men to their dooms should they ever step in it'," Mr. Gold said. "Frankly, I myself never dared to find out if whether or not it was true. So when the Batrishan and I made a deal involving him capturing 100 villains and locking them within Pandora's Box, I was surprised to find out that his claim of capturing that alicorn was real."

"What's an alicorn?" Emma asked.

"A hybrid between unicorn and pegasus. Very hard to find and known to have strong magical abilities."

"And apparently it's got a crush on Fidget. Wonder what..."

A large cough came out of Fidget's mouth. The heroes turned to see him sit up on his hospital bed, gagging and coughing as if he had laughed evilly too often. He looked around and then stared at the heroes.

"Trapped in a bed?" he snorted. "Totally déjà vu."

"Want a glass of water, mate?" Killian offered before the Batrishan snapped his fingers and a glass full of water appeared in his hands.

"Thank you for mentioning." He began taking a large sip from the glass. "And we're not mates. I thought the Savior was your mate."

Killian and Emma blushed at his snarky joke while David and Mr. Gold literally bursted into laughter.

"Ok, you gotta admit that this was a pretty good one!" David said through a couple of chuckles.

"Dad!" Emma said in disbelief.

"Thank you very for the _charming_ compliment, Your Highness," Fidget continued joking around, which only resulted with David laughing even more.

"Fitzgerald, are you trying to be actually funny or to distract us from what's really important?" Killian asked seriously.

"Both," the Batrishan said smugly as he got out of bed and examined his hospital robe. He made a triangular gesture with his hands, summoning a dark purple smoke to go over him from head to toe. At first, the heroes assumed that he was going to teleport himself away, but when the smoke dissolved, they saw that he did not disappear, but instead changed his clothing from a dark purple bomber jacket, black leather pants, and black classic men's boots. His dark hair was tied back in a ponytail and his skin was well groomed.

"Seriously?" Emma arched an eyebrow. "Now's the time for you to get a makeover?"

"I don't do makeup," Fidget said sarcastically as he summoned a hand mirror to check himself out. "Although _you_ should try to use some for those wrinkles on your forehead. How often have you been frowning?" Emma put a hand on her forehead, trying to feel any wrinkles.

"Before the Impossible Deadpan Snarker continues to insult my daughter, can we know what's your deal with Midnight Sparkle?" David said coldly as he pulled out his gun and aimed it at Fidget. The Batrishan hardly flinched.

"What's so hard to understand?" He said. "I go to this small town in the Enchanted Forest." He walked towards David. "I hear rumors of an evil alicorn terrorizing the local men and tell myself that she would be a good villain to put in Pandora's Box." He was now facing David just by a few inches, which surprised the prince. "I join a hunting group to enter her cave and I'm the only one who survived." He yanked David's gun off and took it for himself, examining it. "She instantly has a crush on me and keeps begging that I become her mate despite my numerous rebuffs." With his spare arm, he held out the mirror he had used previously. "Finally, as last resort, I end up charming her so I could get her close enough..." He threw the mirror in the air. "...To trap her in Pandora's Box." He shot at the mirror with the gun, causing glass shards to fall onto the floor. Hook covered Emma in order to make sure that any shard didn't hit her.

"Well, one thing's certain," Mr. Gold said as he walked towards the area on the ground full of shards and delicately picked one up, "is that what you did to this mirror reflects exactly the pain you caused her heart to endure."

"What, like it's my fault I have non-human good looks that she was so attracted to and could take 'no' for an answer even though I kept telling her I preferred someone else?" Fidget made a disgusted face and instantly tossed David's gun halfway across the room until it landed into a trashcan. He then clenched his fist. A metallic noise was heard and the heroes turned to see the trashcan bin being compressed like crunched paper until Fidget let his fist go loose and blinked. The compressed trashcan bin then turned into a live fly, which flew around in zigzags.

"You just...threw a gun in a trashcan and turned it into a fly?" Killian asked curiously as he watched the fly flutter towards Fidget and land on his left shoulder. The Batrishan watched calmly as the bug rested on his shoulder. At first, it seemed to the humans like he wouldn't harm it until they saw him instantly grab the fly with his thumb and index finger and squish it to literal dust.

"And now my gun's gone," David said sourly and crossed his arms.

"You look better without it," Fidget said as he flickered away the remaining dust. "Honestly, I've never been a fan gunpowder warfare."

"It's not as great as the classic swords and magic tricks, aye?" Killian chuckled.

"You might not want to chuckle, codfish, I knew an Aldoradian veteran who nearly lost half of his body from being near cannons too often," Fidget said sourly before straightening himself up. "So, who wants to discuss sending Midnight Sparkle back to the Box?"

"That's what I'd like to discuss," Emma said. "You managed to capture her once. Maybe you can capture her again?"

"I'd rather poison myself with Dreamshade than repeat my technique on Midnight again!" Fidget spat. "I nearly disgraced myself and Isabella's memory!"

"Why? What did you do?"


	8. Legends & Goblins Attack

Race Through Time:

Legends & Goblins Attack

Dozens of hours had passed. The pilgrims and Rosetta had woken up extremely early (an hour before dusk, specifically), eaten leftovers of last night's cooked beans for breakfast, packed everything onto their mule-pulled carts, and started making their way towards the ends of the Eastern Highlands. Aaron, despite his old age, walked by foot and led his sheep all the way. Seeing him guide his sheep like the humanoid shepherd dog he was really intrigued Rosetta.

Speaking of the latter, Rosetta stayed near Dwight the Tapiser ever since Tristan's freakout at last night's campfire. The caring spider had stayed guard in front of her tent all night, with only one eye closed every eight minutes while the seven others were open the same way the monstrous Argos guarded Io the Cow with one eye asleep while 99 were on duty. And now Rosetta was sitting next to Dwight on the driver's seat as he drove the mule-pulled cart carrying all their tools and equipment as they traveled. Occasionally, she would look ahead and see Tristan riding his mule. A frustrated look could be seen on his tanned face.

"Is Tristan hating me right now?" Rosetta asked Dwight as the group kept walking under noontime's sunlight.

"Tristan is somewhat...uneasy about what you said last night," Dwight said. "Batrishans are so hard to find these days, and one that you claim to be near 3 centuries old...it has quite an impact on him."

"I wasn't lying about Fidget." Rosetta put a finger on her forehead. "Most of the scars I have right now on my head came from him."

With four eyes and four eyes busy steering the mules, Dwight used the other half to analyze the scars that Rosetta had. She had received them when Fidget had first arrived in Storybrooke and kidnapped Rosetta and Henry in order to seek his revenge on Killian. During that time, he had put Rosetta under discipline by giving her face and neck cuts with a dagger, giving the Batrishan fresh blood to drink from. Even though months had passed and the scars were gradually fainting, they could still be seen.

"He did this to you?" Dwight gasped as one of his hands touched one of the scars located on the little girl's left cheek. "That can't be right. Old Batrishans are supposed to be pacifists."

"Well, he used a dagger...And his manners are slightly improving. But what exactly do you mean by 'old Batrishans'?"

"It's the term used by folks for Batrishans who lived before or during the Batrishan Genocide. If you know a Batrishan, than you should know that about 3 centuries ago, a majority of that species was decimated."

"The only thing I know about that is that some god got angry at them and killed them off. Fidget appeared to be the last Batrishan remaining...until now," Rosetta replied solemnly.

"It's a very dark story that became a legend," Dwight told her as the group kept moving on. "A long time ago, a Batrishan priestess named Svjetla was betrothed to a fellow priest that she loved very much. One evening, while she was alone in her chamber, she made a wish to have a great child with her love. Unfortunately, an evil god nicknamed 'The Evil One' had heard her wish and used the opportunity to break into her room and grant her wish..."

"Should we guess that he twisted the wish?" Eglantine asked as she and her mule passed by the cart.

Dwight nodded. "The Evil One **did** twist her wish. When the other priests barged into her room after they heard Svjetla scream, all they found was the young priestess in state that indicated one sole thing: raped pregnancy.

"Like every demigod, the Evil One's child was born four months later. But since it was his child and it was born on an annular eclipse that briefly made the world go dark, the first thing that occurred after the baby's birth was the death of its mother. Svjetla's ex-fiancé and the other priests planned to kill the baby, but somehow it disappeared and was never seen again.

"Things got worse when a few days later, the Evil One appeared once again in the sanctuary and demanded custody of his child. Wrath and hatred came out of him when he found out that his child was missing and the priests wanted to kill it. The Evil One went straight on and began sending in plagues, monsters, and natural disasters to the Batrishan Sanctuary. Many lives were lost and barely a few managed to survive. Those who survived became the subjects of endless manhunts until barely a quarter of them managed to find holy sanctuaries where the Evil One couldn't penetrate. There have been humans who safely hosted the Batrishan refugees into their homes but had to turn them over to the Evil One when he threatened to take the humans' own lives."

"And if the Evil One wasn't the end of my species, the Batrishans started to lead themselves towards their dooms," Tristan joined in solemnly. "Many females joined convents and males monasteries to protect themselves from rape, which caused birth decrease. Some chose to mate with humans throughout each generation, which only caused the erasing of Batrishan blood heritage."

Rosetta was speechless. She couldn't believe it: the Batrishan Genocide was worse than anything she had heard before. And now, even the mere solutions that the survivors had come up with to avoid their extinction through the Evil One's wrath had only led to self-extinction. If Rosetta did the math correctly, it might take several future generations before the Batrishan species has faded away for good.

"Remind us again how you survived it, Tristan?" Aaron asked. "After all, you are the grandson of an 'old Batrishan'."

"I am," Tristan confirmed. "My grandmother was only a mere child back then, and she had the dirty luck to be among nomadic Batrishans when the genocide occurred..."

"Nomadic Batrishans?" Maurice frowned.

"Batrishans who occasionally left the Batrishan Sanctuary to explore the outside world for a while," Tristan explained. "My grandmother was born from a Batrishan herbalist and a farmer. One day, when my grandmother was six, when the farm was running low on green vegetables for soups and herbs for making medicine, my great-grandfather took his wife and my grandmother on a long trip in order to go collect more seeds for the crops. They left on a small pilgrimage with a few other Batrishan farmers and healers with similar purposes. After a month of traveling around the world and successfully collecting bags full of seeds, they came back to the Sanctuary, only to find it in ruins and ashes. Thousands of corpses were found everywhere.

"After burying the corpses and hearing a revenge-promising prophecy, the nomadic Batrishans left the Sanctuary for good and went off to the outside world, seeking shelter and sanctuary among humans while dealing with the Evil One sending his army to kill any of us. As for my grandmother, she, her parents, and a dozen of Batrishans had run away to the Midwest, where castles holding civilizations safely thrived. My grandmother was ten when the group tried to reach Camberley, which is like a smaller version of Camelot, while being pursued by goblins sent by the Evil One. Only half of the group managed to enter the safe gates of Camberley while the goblins crushed the other half. Among the dead ones were my great-grandparents.

"The king of Camberley had pity for the Batrishans and granted them legal shelter within the city. The adult survivors took on jobs in monasteries, farms, healing centers, and workshops while the children were placed as servants in the castle with the promise of a better life. My grandmother had become a servant to a lady of the king's court until her hard work and loyal service got her a promotion to lady in waiting. She then married a Batrishan of her age, who had been placed as a squire as a child until he became a knight during his adult years..."

"Which led to the birth of your father, The Knight, who went on several crusades in the name of the king with his son, The Squire, by his side!" Rosetta realized out loud. Too loud, unfortunately: Tristan brutally stopped his mule and turned to give a dark glare at Rosetta.

"You make it seem like you already knew this before we even met you," he said suspiciously.

Rosetta tried to say something, but Dwight covered her mouth with one hand and used another hand to motion his fellow pilgrims to remain silent. His eyes looked in eight different directions, obviously concerned about something being near.

"I feel like something's coming," he said.

Just when he said this, a pack of ghastly black creatures dug their way out of the green grass and crawled out, surrounding the pilgrims and Rosetta. Anaïs and Eglantine yelped in fright at the sight of the withered-looking beasts as they walked on all fours with their claws buried on the ground and their drooling fangs hissing at the group.

"Goblins," Maurice gasped. "I've seen the images in one of my books."

"They must have sensed my presence," Tristan said in horror. "They must be working for the Evil One."

" **Smell danger** ," one of them hissed. " **Evil One smell danger."** It hissed again before its blank eyes turned towards Rosetta.

" **Evil One smell danger in Death's puppy. MUST KILL DEATH'S PUPPY!** " It shrieked louder and darted towards Rosetta.


	9. The Chase

Race Through Time:

The Chase

"Watch out!" Dwight shouted. He jumped off his cart and began tackling down several goblins with his eight arms. It was quite a sight: while four arms were busy strangling the beasts, the other four were impaling other beasts with knives right into the stomach. If nobody knew that Dwight was a tapiser, then he could have easily been mistaken for a human-sized spider ninja.

The other pilgrims tried to get into battle stances while others tried to protect their equipment from the goblins. Aaron, quite surprisingly for an old parson his age, used his shepherd's crook as a bo staff to knock goblins away from his sheep. Isaac and Maurice had grabbed crossbows and began hitting the bull's-eye, which was located right in the center of the goblins' foreheads. Anaïs' butt was literally crushing goblins into goblin purée, Harry provoked the mules to kick goblins with their hooves, and Tristan was busy slaying most of the aggressors with his sword.

" **MUST CAPTURE BATRISHAN! EVIL ONE WANT BATRISHAN!** " lots of them hissed.

"Charmed, but no thanks," Tristan muttered as he decapitated one of the goblins.

Meanwhile, Eglantine had pulled Rosetta off the cart and tried to pull her away from the bloodshed. Five goblins noticed the two of them trying to escape and proceeded to surround them. Eglantine grabbed a nearby stick and held it out in a threatening way, although it was clear that the swan prioress was not a fighter.

" **Swan hand over Death's puppy to goblins!** " one of them hissed at Eglantine. " **Evil One wants Death's puppy dead!** "

"Why does your master want Rosetta dead?" demanded Eglantine. "She's only a child!" The goblins hissed in frustration as they got closer.

" **Death's puppy has old Batrishan stench on her** ," another goblin hissed. " **Death's puppy has kept a Batrishan out of Evil One's anger. Death's puppy must pay for defying Evil One!** "

"How on Earth can I be defying a god that I don't even know?" Rosetta asked speechlessly.

"Maurice! Is there any way to get rid of this freaks?" Isaac demanded as he shot at another goblin. "There's too many of them!"

"Well, if I remember correctly from my research, goblins are fatally allergic to anything that's holy," Maurice shouted back.

"That's it!" Eglantine pulled out something from her grey cloak: a golden crucifix. She held it out in front of the goblins, who hissed furiously and slightly backed off. Eglantine stepped towards them, prompting the goblins to back away even further. The more Eglantine walked and held out her crucifix, more goblins began to crowd against one another as if they were turning into a big pile of withered skin trying to back away from God.

"Be gone, you foul creatures!" Eglantine shouted.

"Even if we can force them away from us, how can we force them to leave?" pointed out Anaïs.

A fair point: they could prevent the goblins from getting near them, but it's not like they could just walk all the way out of the highlands while Eglantine was holding out her crucifix. That would be too much.

While it seemed like everyone was running out of ideas, Rosetta instantly placed a hand on her forehead when she felt the usual headache she received whenever a vision came to her. And this time, it wasn't a pleasant one: it showed her goblins burning into ashes while standing by the edges of a river located in a way too familiar green environment.

Realization hit her and her eyes darted down the green plain they were in and saw the river down ahead. _This is crazy_ , she thought. But her only option left her no choice.

Rosetta began running away down the plain and straight towards the river.

"Rosetta! Where are you going?" Aaron called out when he saw the little girl running away. The crowded goblins noticed the same thing and ignored the crucifix, proceeding to chase Rosetta as she ran towards the river.

Despite her small legs weakening after every five minutes, Rosetta didn't stop running. The grass was tickling the skin unprotected by her Mary Jane shoes with morning dew, but she ignored that as well. While even ignoring the wind blowing through her hair, she saw the river getting closer and closer and noticed that the river was actually located at the center of a six-feet high rocky ravine, which would make the situation quite similar to a diver jumping from a diving board before hitting the waters of a pool. And not to mention that Rosetta, like her father, couldn't swim...

"DADDY, HELP ME!" she screamed at the top of her lungs as she jumped off the ravine and into the cold, brown-colored waters. The goblins hissed furiously as they stopped by the edge of the ravine, watching Rosetta struggling to keep her head out of the water and her legs barely capable of swimming. Most of them were conflicted by whether or not they should just let the demigoddess drown or get them herself at the expense of risking their lives by getting near the water.

"Hey! Freaks of nature!" a voice called out. The goblins turned their heads to see too late that Tristan, flying in the air with the use of tanned bat-wings, was holding Dwight by the collar while the spider held out buckets full of water, one in each hand. "Time for a shower!"

He tossed all of the eight buckets contents over the goblins the same way firefighting planes would unleash water over a burning fire. Contacting the water made the goblins' skin burn into dark red flames. The creatures wailed in pain from the burning torture while Tristan dropped off Dwight near them and flew down to grab Rosetta, who was nearly on the verge of drowning. By the time they reached the main land, Dwight had managed to push all the weakened goblins down the ravine and into the river, condemning the blasted creatures to burst into ashes that dissolved into the river's flow.

"Goblins," Dwight shook his head in disgust. "Freaks of nature that will always disgust me."

The rest of the pilgrims rushed to the scene along with their supplies. Meanwhile, Tristan's wings disappeared from his back while he gently placed Rosetta on a rock. The young girl spat water out of her mouth.

"You can't swim and yet you still jump in a river in order to lead away a bunch of goblins?" Tristan scolded her. "Exactly how crazy are you?"

"I...I don't know," Rosetta stammered. "All I know is that for some reason, my instincts told me that getting near the river would be fatal to the goblins." She began sneezing and shivering. Noticing this, Tristan took off his shirt and had Rosetta put it on. This made her wonder what made her the warmest: the shirt's thick, warm woolen fabric or her cheeks blushing at the sight of Tristan's well-built and bare torso.

"Looks like Rosetta hit a jackpot," Aaron said as his fingers examined the remaining river water that formed puddles on the ground. "The river is full of holy water."

"Since when are rivers full of holy water?" Isaac frowned.

"Since the era when clergymen and saints began to go on pilgrimages to diverse sanctuaries, monasteries, and holy places," Eglantine answered. She looked at the river disappearing into the horizon. "Many of them have chosen to go to these places by following a river's flow. Back in my convent, the nuns told stories and lessons about how the saints drinking from the rivers and the holy places inadvertently spilling offerings to God into these waterworks provoked the waters to be filled with holy water. That's why the goblins were destroyed once they were touched by it."

"So it's a holy river?" Rosetta asked. "Like the River Styx?"

"It's nothing like the River Styx, my child," Aaron said while giving a serious look at Rosetta. "The River Styx flows through the dark underworlds, and whenever people swear by it, they fear being affected by the darkness, death, and prices to pay that fill its waters. That's why people avoid breaking vows made by the river."

"Speaking of death, why did they call Rosetta 'Death's puppy'?" Anaïs suddenly asked. Her question got every pilgrim's attention and they turned to face Rosetta, demanding an explanation.

"I didn't mean for any of this to happen!" she said while tears began to fill her eyes. "I didn't mean to be accidently dragged here and disturb your pilgrimage to Canterbury! I'm just a child of Anubis who was just trying to enjoy my school holiday in Storybrooke by reading while my parents were off at work until I had to pick the Land Without Magic's story version of your adventures, and right when I read the first two lines, the book's words disappeared and were replaced by other golden words that just appeared..."

"Time out," Maurice cut her off. "What did the golden words say?"

"They said ' _the race through time you must take; to when the fate of balance must have begun!_ ' Believe me, I..."

"Uh-oh," Tristan gasped.

"What is it, Tristan?" Harry asked. "Do you know what this is about?"

"Just the part about the race through time," the squire said in a freaked out tone.

"So what is it?"

The words barely came out of the Batrishan's mouth until ten seconds later.

"A prophecy about the end of the world."


	10. Continuing The Search

Race Through Time:

Continuing The Search

Anubis nearly fell on the floor by the time he and Marion entered the sheriff's office in order to attend the meeting. At first, everyone had assumed it was because of what Fidget had said about how he had managed to trick Midnight Sparkle into Pandora's Box the first time they met. Now they all knew why he felt disgraced about it.

"You faked desiring intimacy with her -which apparently she wanted to have with you so badly despite barely even knowing you- and right before insertion, you sucked her into the box?" Killian said in disbelief. "What the Hell, Fitzgerald?"

"I was running out of options!" Fidget protested. "You think I'm a fan of forceful sex? Besides, if I wasn't going to do it, then Midnight would have most likely been the one putting that ghastly option into action!"

Killian cupped his nose with nose and gave an exasperated sigh. As for Mr. Gold, Emma, and David, they were equally disturbed.

"As much as I know what it's like dealing with rather seductive women, you got to admit that this is pretty low for you," David told Fidget.

"Do I even look like I'm proud of it?" the Batrishan nearly shouted. "Seriously!"

"Calm down, Fidget," Emma said. "Look, we can tell you were...uncomfortable about it and you don't want to do it again. We're just, slightly disturbed. That's all."

"Because now you're telling me that out of all the disturbing things you've encountered ever since you discovered that you were actually the child of fairytale characters, one villain faking sex just to imprison a victim in Pandora's Box is the most disturbing?" Fidget snorted.

Emma said nothing. She knew that Fidget was making a point right there: ever since Henry had come into her life telling her that she was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, 'disturbing' was an appropriate choice of words for describing the things she had witnessed.

"Anubis, what's wrong?" Marion asked her husband as she helped him get up. The heroes and the Batrishan were curious to see the Ancient Egyptian god of funerals on the floor and being helped up by his mortal wife. Anubis rubbed his head, feeling his headache once more.

"Was the Batrishan's story _that_ disturbing, Lord Anubis?" Mr. Gold asked.

"No." The god went to sit on a nearby chair. "Believe it or not, I can relate to such a similar situation."

"Which caused you to have both ablutophobia and aquaphobia," Marion said drily. "I still had to chase you around the house in order to give you a bath during our first dating days."

"TMI, Marion!" Anubis snapped in frustration. David and Emma gave one another an awkward look that told one another that this might be the explanation of why Anubis couldn't swim despite being a god.

"Anyway," Anubis said, "I didn't fall because of the story. I fell because I heard Rosie screaming in my head."

"Was it a vision?" Marion started freaking out. They still haven't Rosie, so this could be helpful.

"No, it's one of those disadvantages of gods siring demigods: whenever they scream your name, it gives you a ghastly pain in the head."

"Figuratively?" Emma asked. Anubis gave a disbelieving look. "Never mind."

"So why was Rosetta screaming your name?" Fidget asked. "Is she in danger?"

"That's what I'm worried about." Dread began to fill the eyes of Anubis. "I heard her scream: 'DADDY, HELP ME!'"

"So she's in danger?" David asked as he got up. "From what?"

"And that's the worst part! I don't know what the danger is! My hounds and I have searched everywhere in town and throughout the woods! I tried a locator spell using her backpack to track her! I even tried to use the blood link between my daughter and I to find her, but even that didn't work for some reason!" Anubis dropped his head into his hands in defeat. "Who am I kidding? I'm a god who can't even take care of his own eight-year-old child!"

Marion placed a comforting arm on her husband's back. "Anubis, we _will_ find her. Don't worry."

"You don't suppose she might have crossed the town line by accident?" Emma suggested.

"No, we checked the town line already," Marion answered. "No signs of her scent crossing it were found."

"Not to mention that the mere idea of her doing such a thing would be downright stupid," Fidget said bluntly.

"Exactly how is that helping them?" David glared skeptically at the Batrishan while referring to Marion and Anubis.

"UGH! How idiotic are you people?" Fidget held out his hands in the air. "That kid has an I.Q that could almost rival the one of the ex-Dark One," he pointed at Rumplestiltskin, "and managed to contribute a lot to foiling my schemes on killing the codfish, and you still treat her like she's some helpless little eight-year-old!" He then turned his attention to Emma. "Your own kid knew that something was going on in this town while he was ten, now he's the Author, and you still act like he's defenseless and needs your guidance 24/7! Grow up a bit, people!"

His words really hit them hard. Usually, when a villain badmouthed them off, they usually try to fight back or something. But this time, however, they didn't, for his badmouthing was making a fair point: they kept visualizing their kids as helpless, and whenever the kids tried to prove they weren't, they were either caught in danger or this became another one of those situations were parents learned the hard way that their kids weren't so little anymore and that they had the obvious resources to take care of themselves. After all, despite the fact that they knew what their kids were capable off, Emma, Marion, and Anubis still had a hard time accepting the fact that they were overprotective.

"So," Killian cut off the silence. "Shall we discuss how we're going to track down Midnight Sparkle and find Rosetta in less than twenty-nine days?"

"Now that we think about it, Midnight's been out of the box for almost a month," David said. "And on the same day she showed up, meaning yesterday, we learn that Rosetta has disappeared. You don't suppose Midnight might have kidnapped her?"

"I hardly doubt it," Mr. Gold said. He rubbed his chin while thinking. "Alicorns are very unique creatures alright, but their magical powers forbid them from harming children..."

"Seriously?" Fidget gapped. "Midnight can be a man's worst nightmare, **especially** if they step into her cave, but she can't harm kids?"

"Well, despite being nearly 300 years and looking incredibly young, you do act like an average typical teenager," Killian chuckled at Fidget.

"Shut up, codfish. You're barely eight years older than me."

"You're both old men, let's go with that!" Marion said in an annoyed tone. All the men in the room glared at her. "What? It's not my fault Emma and I are the only ones without aging issues!"

"As fascinating as that might be, we should worry back to our initial problem," Mr. Gold said. "Concerning our alicorn friend, I might have something in our shop that could help us track her since the hounds of Anubis couldn't pick up her scent."

"What is it?" Emma asked.

"Equestrian dust, from the homeland of all mystical horses. Of course, there are three different types of Equestrian dust, one for each horse, but combining the dust of a pegasus with the one of a unicorn should create a new dust, meant for alicorns. We can then use that dust and a locator spell to track down Midnight Sparkle."

"You know that the probability of this idea might work at 50-50, right?" Anubis said. "After all, Equestrian dust meant for alicorns is as rare as the alicorn itself."

"What choice do we have, Anubis?" Marion looked at him. Her husband glanced at her cyan eyes one more time before giving in.

"Well don't count me for going after Midnight!" Fidget got up and started walking towards the door.

"Hey! After everything you did, helping us is the proper thing left for you to do!" Killian grabbed Fidget by the arm but the latter yanked him away.

"The proper thing left for me to do is to go back to my cottage, see if I can find anything that might help me find Rosetta -hopefully I won't have to pray for my patron's intervention- and find something that will shield me from Midnight!" Fidget said.

"But..."

Fidget grabbed Killian and began shaking him as if he were trying to get him to think reasonably.

"GET A CLUE, KILLIAN! I'M BEING HUNTED BY A REVENGE-SEEKING AND CREEPY STALKING ALICORN! AND THE WORST PART IS THAT NOW I'M NOT SURE IF SHE WANTS TO KILL ME OR INFECT ME WITH SOME SORT OF LOVE SPELL!"

Once he was done screaming, he let go off Killian and stormed off the room, slamming the door while he was at it.

"It's official, we're dealing with a paranoid teenager," Emma sighed.


	11. A Shocking Vision

Race Through Time:

A Shocking Vision

Usually, Fidget would have driven his car or maybe flown all the way back to his cottage, but with Midnight trying to hunt him down, he preferred to do the quickest and laziest way: magically teleporting himself from outside the sheriff's station to his kitchen.

The first thing he did was to make doubly sure that no psychotic alicorn was lurking in his small, yet comfortable kitchen. He briefly sniffed the air: all he could smell was the black painted wood of the cabinets, the vanilla-scented polisher he had previously used to clean his freezer and refrigerator, soap fragrance from recently cleaned dishes, and lilacs...

Fidget stopped at the scent of the lilacs. This was one fragrance that he didn't recall smelling before he left his cottage yesterday. He found the scent coming from the small table where he usually ate alone these days minus the Thursdays when Rosetta came for tea. Right on top of the lace tablecloth he had managed to recover from the ruins of Aldorada stood a small vase with a purple lilac in it, and right next to the vase was laid a small package with a paper note on the top.

Fidget took the paper. At first, he assumed it might be some sort of trick from Midnight, but after sniffing the paper and recognizing the handwriting, he let out a sigh of relief when he found out that it wasn't from the crazy alicorn.

' _Dear Fitzgerald,_

 _I came earlier today to check up on you to see how you've been doing since our first encounter, but you weren't home, so I chose to leave you this. You'd be surprised: I actually found this old thing inside the Storybrooke Library and seeing something inside of it reminded me of you._

 _I hope you are enjoying your day and that you occasionally think of dropping by at_ Dutchman's Teapot _on Sundays._

 _Theresa'_

Theresa Rogers, the charming, yet seemingly so familiar volunteer he had met when he had moved in. She had left this here. She had placed the lilac onto the vase. And once again, she was suggesting that they one day hang out as 'friends' at _Dutchman's Teapot._

Curious, the Batrishan took the small package and used one of his claws to get rid of the carton paper that covered the package. While strands of carton fell onto the floor, a red book with the golden title **The Poetic Wondering** laid in his hands. Fidget's eyes nearly watered at the sight of the book and his memories went back to the days when his foster mother, Geneva Denada Cortés, still lived. Back when he was seven and living a happy life in Aldorada, his mother tried to get him into poetry when the two of them were stuck inside the family estate due to a horrible rainstorm. Her selection on that stormy day was **The Poetic Wondering** , a collection of classic tales. It was such a warm memory: the two of them sitting by the fireplace and taking turns reading poetic verses while their maid Carmen came in to serve hot tea.

Fidget noticed a bookmark within the book and was quite surprised to see when he opened it that it was placed right at the first page of the poem **Pan's Pursuit For Syringa**.

Two women were after Fidget. At least one of them wasn't crazy.

 _Later_

Fidget unlocked the brown door once he got to the upper floor of his cottage. The door creaked itself open once he pulled out the key and pushed the door.

The storage room, where he kept all the magical items he had collected during his pursuit for revenge and anything he save from his ruined past. If anybody else had stepped inside and seen all those objects sorted out, cleaned, and dust-free, they would have mistaken it for a mini-version of Mr. Gold's pawnshop. Each step Fidget took caused the floor to creak. The wind blew a bit through the slightly open window, causing the white curtains to move silently and let out a little bit of sunlight.

Fidget closed the window, thus preventing the wind from coming in. With darkness now starting to fill the storage room, he grabbed an old Victorian lamp from the days he spent in Victorian England at the end of the 1890s and used magic to light it up. Purple light began to fill the room.

"OK," Fidget asked himself out loud. "Where the hell did I put that mirror?"

He scavenged through the items he kept until five minutes later, when he found a hand mirror hidden in a cabinet.

It was quite a fancy mirror, with hearts and vines carved into the silver metal that formed it. The glass was stainless and emitted quite some light when the lamp's purple light reflected on it.

Fidget remembered when Cora, his mentor and one of the five immortals he struck deals with, gave him the mirror. It went back to the days before the First Dark Curse and Cora ruled Wonderland as the dreaded Queen of Hearts; Regina must have still been a young queen and Snow White hardly in her pre-teens back in the Enchanted Forest. When he learned that Cora had the power to rip out hearts, Fidget had traveled to Wonderland and presented himself to the queen in the hopes that he could strike some deal with her and she'd teach him how to rip hearts (Fidget had hoped that he could rip and crush the codfish's heart out).

But Cora had seen more into him. She had seen the darkness in him that rejected love and craved for revenge more than a beggar could go mad for water and food. She had seen in front of her an eternally young teen Batrishan who had potential and was willing to use it for purposes that even her own daughter Regina couldn't pursue without pressure. So Cora had sweetened the deal: she'd teach him magic if he served her as her right-hand man until his apprenticeship was complete.

Such dark days were part of Fidget's villainous success, that was certain. He had learned much faster than any of Cora's other pupils in less than five years, which was a record. Even Cora had begun to see and treat him as if the Batrishan were her own son and she held no grudge when Fidget had declined her offer for him to become her heir once his apprenticeship was over, saying that his thirst to crush his incompetent rival mattered more to him right now. Cora definetly saw that she taught him well.

Back to the mirror. During his third year of apprenticeship, Cora had held a small birthday dinner as a token of her pride in his success. It was quite a moment for Fidget, since the last time he celebrated his birthday was decades, maybe a century, ago, when he turned seventeen back in Aldorada. As a birthday gift, Cora had given him the mirror, which had the power to show him whoever he wanted to find. The mirror turned out to have worked when Fidget tried it out and saw that the codfish was running errands for Peter Pan.

In the present day, Fidget glanced at his reflection in the mirror. If this mirror helped him track the codfish and find his final location to be Storybrooke, then it should help him find Rosetta no matter where she was.

"Show me the demigoddess that I seek," he spoke to the mirror. A silvery haze began to spin within the glass until it revealed something that appeared to be a river full of almond-brown water in the middle of a vast land of highlands. Right at the shores of the river stood a bunch of people disassembling carts in order to create some sort of boat. What really stood out to Fidget was how animalistic the people looked. In some ways, they almost reminded Fidget of himself.

The mirror then showed what he was looking for: Rosetta getting her bruised fingers wrapped with a cloth bandage by what appeared to be some sort of humanoid spider. The two of them were moving their lips as if they were having a conversation but no words came out. That was the problem with the mirror: it _showed_ however you wanted to see, but you couldn't hear anything.

Another person came into the scene, as if to check up on Rosetta getting her medical help. Fidget felt himself trembling as he saw the new person on the mirror. It wasn't possible! How could this be? Bartok and everyone he knew had strictly told Fidget that he was the last of his kind.

So why on earth did he see a Batrishan other than himself on the glass?

His sight became hazy and he collapsed onto the floor, with the now blank mirror in his hands.


	12. Night On The River

Race Through Time:

Night On The River

Rosetta nearly tilted her head over the ship's hull until Tristan stopped her.

"I doubt you want your vomit to turn the river's holy water into unholy ones," he said as he handed a small basin to the child. A grimace appeared on his face when he saw how much came out of her stomach. "You've never been on a boat, have you?"

"Never," groaned Rosetta. She grabbed a nearby towel and began wiping her mouth. "And I'm never going to put another foot on a boat once I go back to Storybrooke."

Dwight, Maurice, and Aaron **had** to have the splendid idea of traveling out of the Eastern Highlands and to the shrine of Canterbury by using the river, which as a bonus would protect them from any possible attack from goblins. As much as Rosetta was fascinated with Dwight's skills into turning all their carts into one big boat capable of carrying the pilgrims, the sheep, the mules, and the equipment , and moving at ease on the river, she still hated the fact that she might have to spend the rest of her journey on a boat. Her incapability of swimming was enough, thank you very much.

She held onto her blanket, shivering and sneezing. The river might have been holy, but they didn't prevent her from catching a cold.

"Drink some water," Tristan said as he placed a canteen over Rosetta's lips. The little girl couldn't take it much longer: she grabbed the canteen and began drinking large sips of water, ignoring how painfully they went down her throat.

"Stop it or you'll get a tummy ache!" Tristan scolded her. He took the canteen away from her and placed it next to him.

"Sorry," Rosetta said sheepishly. Her eyes then watched Tristan has he grabbed the basin full of vomit and began pouring some sort of yellowish liquid from a bottle into the basin. "Uh...what are you doing?"

"Making skin ointment," the Batrishan shrugged.

Rosetta felt like her stomach was going to get sick. "You can't be serious!"

"People back in Camberley use vomit in order to produce homemade skin ointment." Tristan looked offended. "You'd be surprised how much nutrients can be found in leftovers that you spit out of your stomach and how much homemade skin ointment can cost in the market at Camberley."

"Sorry." Rosetta bowed her head in shame. "I'm still guilty of my previous actions."

"You mean the jumping in a river to save us from a bunch of goblins or the fact that you know about the race through time?"

"Everything! This is what I get for being a demigoddess with advanced foreshadowing powers! You get kidnapped, your life on the line, treated like a frail creature who needs protection all the time, visions that bother you almost every single minute, and gods who put the weight of history on your shoulders. I'm only eight and I make messes out of everything!" Tears began rolling down her cheeks.

"There, there," Tristan said soothingly as he pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and began wiping the tears from Rosetta's cheeks.

"Is everything all right back there?" Dwight called from his position of maintaining the boat's tiller. Along with Tristan and Rosetta, he was the only one awake on the boat: everyone else had fallen asleep.

"Don't worry, Dwight!" Tristan called out. He and Rosetta were sitting by the boat's hull while stars began to reflect on the river. It was rather ironic: the river was brown colored by day, and yet by night it reflected the sky the same way a mirror perfectly reflected its viewer.

Rosetta sneezed into Tristan's handkerchief while the latter was busy stirring the vomit with a wooden spoon. "What was that stuff you poured into my vomit just before I had my tantrum?" she asked him.

"Bourbon. The alcohol helps destroy any unwanted bacteria," Tristan explained. "Right now I'm just stirring it a bit before letting it sit for five to ten minutes. Usually we put it near an open window, but tonight's breeze should work."

The more he explained, the more Rosetta forgot about her disgust and wanted to now more. "How old were you when you learned to make skin ointment like that?"

"You'd be surprised, but Dwight actually taught it to me when I was a kid," Tristan chuckled.

"Wait, you knew Dwight since you were kids?" Rosetta quickly glanced at the Tapiser, who was pulling the tiller towards the right in order to keep the boat in the proper direction.

"No, I knew Dwight since _I_ was a kid. Dwight's eleven years older than me."

"Aren't you like 23?"

"Lucky guess. Anyway, like I told you and the others, Camberley is known for welcoming humans and nonhumans alike, and like the other children of the Batrishan survivors, I grew up working in the royal palace, and since my father was a knight, I served him as his squire.

"When I was ten, there came the warm season along with a bad spread of chicken pox. Of course, the pox could easily be cured by skin ointment, so when my father and a couple of the other knights got infected by the pox, I went to go buy some at the market in Camberley.

"The only problem was that with many people infected by the pox, many others tried to get skin ointment to cure them. The market was thus crowded with people pushing one another in order to reach the stands selling the skin ointment. I had a hard time moving through the mobs of customers storming like army ants that I fell into the dirt, leaving me as a possible victim of trampling.

"That's when Dwight stepped in. Back then, he had recently moved to Camberley and began running his small, yet productive tapestry shop. He saw me falling from his shop's window, rushed outside, and pulled me inside. He chided me at first, asking me what on earth was a young child like myself doing out there in a mob that could have nearly killed me. I told him that my father, along with other knights, needed skin ointment to cure their pox, and surprisingly, Dwight took me to his kitchen and showed me how to make the ointment using pig's vomit. I brought the ointment back to the castle and a few days later, my father and the others were cured."

"So that's how you met Dwight," Rosetta concluded. "Who knew that vomit could bring friends together?"

Tristan chuckled at her joke. "Yes, vomit brought us together. And ever since then, I kept visiting Dwight during my spare time. He's like a big brother to me."

Rosetta nodded. Her hands pulled her blanket closer to her skin in order to gain more warmth while the ship continued to go further down the river. The Eastern Highlands seemed to become less vast with plains and signs of trees were appearing around every ten minute. Hopefully, the pilgrims and Rosetta would find a forest by dawn.

"So...why are you going to the shrine of Canterbury, Tristan?" Rosetta cut off the silence. "What's your individual problem?" Tristan had been filling a jar with the now smooth, lime-colored skin ointment when Rosetta asked the question. He then went on to answer her question once he had corked the bottle shut and put it inside a black leather satchel he kept by his side.

"Remember what I said earlier today about the nomadic Batrishans hearing a revenge-promising prophecy and about the race through time when you mentioned it?" he asked.

"I do...Are you saying they're the same?" Rosetta asked.

"They're related, but not the same. Matter of fact, the two prophecies are so confusing that none of my fellow surviving Batrishans have ever found which one was the most accurate."

"What do you mean?"

"Well like I said previously, the nomadic Batrishans received a revenge-seeking prophecy before leaving the Batrishan Sanctuary for good. The prophecy came from Ashiva..."

"The almighty four-armed god?"

"You've heard about him?"

"Partially from visions and because Fidget keeps cursing with his name."

"Oh, right. Your Batrishan friend from Storybrooke." Tristan looked uneasy at the mention of Fidget. "Anyway, Ashiva prophesized to the nomadic Batrishans about the Evil One being punished for his sacrilegious by facing his doom at the hands of the thing he wrongly created from one of Ashiva's followers."

"The child he got from raping Svjetla. You're saying that Ashiva predicted that in order to avenge the Batrishans killed in the genocide, the Evil One must be killed through patricide?"

"Precisely. However, the race through time was a prophecy that existed _long_ before the first Batrishan put his foot on the ground and around the days where the Evil One was 'punished' by the allied gods for some sort of crime. The prophecy was that, in order to avenge himself on those who wronged him and the universe, the Evil One would bring to life a child on the day an annular eclipse bringing unimaginable darkness would arrive, and the next time that the eclipse returns, the child would grant the Evil One access to an infinite power of darkness that would make him rule the universe. And the thing that doesn't make sense is that the annular eclipse was said to return 300 years after its last appearance. The Evil One's child might be dead by now...unless of course, he or she managed to live for almost 300 years."

He gave a glare at Rosetta. She didn't need to ask, for she got the message

Tristan suspected Fidget of being the Evil One's child and the said destroyer of the world.


	13. Equestrian Dust

Race Through Time:

Equestrian Dust

The door to the pawnshop opened two days later and the heroes were rather shocked to see Fidget stumbling in like he hadn't left his bed for days, which was accurate. Apparently he managed to get himself sick and locked himself in his cottage for three days (if you include the day he returned to his cottage).

"What the heck happened to you?" Marion exclaimed. "You look like you've spent hours forcing alcohol on yourself!" Judging by how pale the Batrishan's nose looked like, he did have the appearance of someone who drank too much. Seeing the state of his old friend, Killian helped him stand up straight since the latter seemed to have a hard time focusing on walking with his normal leg and his peg leg, and judging by the fact that Fidget didn't even bother to snap at him or anything, it was obvious that things weren't straight.

"Is that...wine that I smell?" David sniffed as Mr. Gold brought a chair from the back and placed it near one of the counters for the Batrishan to sit. A look of concern appeared on Killian and began to take a sniff at Fidget.

"More like a 1772 Aldoradian Sangria, I'll say," Killian replied. "Fidget, exactly how much did you drink?"

"12 whole bottles," the Batrishan said. Emma, who had been drinking coffee currently, spit the drink out of her mouth and onto Anubis' face in shock.

"You're lucky I have darker skin than you," he said while he summoned a towel to wipe off the coffee from his face.

"12 WHOLE BOTTLES? BUT AREN'T YOU A MINOR? WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU DRINK TWELVE WHOLE BOTTLES?" Emma's voice exploded to the point where everyone had to cover his or her ears until she was done.

Fidget brushed it off as if it wasn't a big deal. "Bah! I drank the Elixir Of Nine Lives. I doubt that I'll die from intoxication!"

"The what now?" Marion frowned.

"Just an old potion that grants eternal immortality to whoever drinks it nine times," Mr. Gold said. "I've heard that our dear friend here drank the nine sips left of the last bottle of Elixir Of Nine Lives before he began his official hunt for Hook..."

"Leaving me all the time in the world to plot my revenge. Yay!" Fidget let out a weird hiccup. "Goldie, ol' chap! How's it going with the Equestrian dust to find da predator?"

This was rather weird for everyone: an intoxicated Fidget calling Mr. Gold 'Goldie'? That would be the next thing among the weird things they've seen in this town.

To answer Fidget's question, Mr. Gold pulled out a small vial of sparkling violet powder from the pocket of his trench coat. "Combining pegasus dust with unicorn dust took longer than I expected and required lots of experimenting, but Belle and I have managed to produce it."

"So how does it work?" Killian asked. "It's not like we can just sprinkle it on the floor and expect it to fly us straight to Midnight Sparkle."

"Why would you want to sparkle the floor...when you got a magic globe?" Fidget said.

Mr. Gold stiffened at the mention of the magic globe that he used to find his son in the Land Without Magic and Henry when the latter was kidnapped to Neverland. "How on earth did you know I had it?"

"Duh! My old mentor had it before you!"

"I can't stand it," Anubis groaned. He snapped his fingers and a bucket full of water appeared in his hands. No one expected for the god to then toss the water onto Fidget's face, causing him to yelp at the contact between cold water and his face. "Feeling better."

Fidget rubbed his face dry with his hands and blinked a bit. "Surprisingly," he said in a normal tone, "that helped."

"Concerning the globe," Mr. Gold returned to the main topic. "I forgot that Cora was your mentor. Has she told you about it?"

"Actually, I was with her when she went to trade the magic globe from its previous owner, some weird caterpillar, with an enchanted hookah. Cora was after the Cheshire Cat back then. Long story." The Batrishan let one of his fingers cautiously rubbing the notch on his right ear while a grim, dismaying look was surfacing his face. The heroes didn't have to ask: they instantly guessed that Fidget had encountered the cat and tension must have occurred for Fidget to get his ear notched.

Gold went to get the magic globe, which he kept in a cabinet full of school globes, sport balls, and miniature crystal balls. It was slightly dusty from being unused in years, but all it needed was a little wipe from Gold's sleeve to look clean again. The ex-Dark One uncorked the vial of Equestrian dust and began to sprinkle the dust onto the globe. Those who were familiar with the globe expected some sort of bloody map marking the location of the alicorn, but instead a sparkling live image appeared.

"Looks like it has different effects when you use Equestrian dust," David commented as they gathered closer to the globe in order to have a better look. The image showed Midnight Sparkle on a fishing boat in the middle of the Storybrooke Harbor. She was in the middle of pulling out a full net from the water, and once the net was on the deck, she used magic to toss all the caught fish back into the water and sort the leftover green seaweed into separate containers.

"What the heck is she doing?" Marion asked as the image dissipated from the globe.

"Most likely finding a way to have my heart, depending on which way she means it," Fidget groaned.

"I can instantly teleport us to the docks and try to corner the alicorn," Anubis suggested.

"Then take this just in case," Gold said as he handed the vial of Equestrian dust to Anubis. "If your hounds take a sniff of this, they will be able to track down the alicorn's scent."

"Great," Killian said. "I'll take Fitzgerald back to his cottage."

"I don't need a babysitter, codfish." Fidget glared at the pirate.

"You've intoxicated yourself, you got a stalking alicorn on your tail, and we need you," Killian listed. "And as far as I know, we need to have a chat...without any violence."

Fidget silently glared at the pirate he loathed.

"I _really_ hate you," he muttered in defeat.

"Great, let's get going." Anubis waved his hands and he, Marion, Emma, and David disappeared into a smoke of hieroglyphics, leaving Gold, Killian, and Fidget alone in the pawnshop.

"I'd better take you back home," Killian told Fidget as he helped the reluctant Batrishan get up from his chair. Without saying a word, Fidget walked towards the globe and pricked his right index finger. Gold and Killian watched as a drop of black blood fell onto the globe and a black map appeared on the globe.

"The Eastern Highlands," Gold realized. "I've seen them back in the Enchanted Forest. But why...?"

"Rosetta's there," Fidget answered.

Suddenly, a black blast sprouted out of the globe and struck the Batrishan, much to the shock of the other two men in the room. Fidget began to feel dizzy.

"Uh. I wonder if this happens to anyone in this town on a regular basis," he said before falling unconscious onto the ground. Again.


	14. Darwin's Goons

Race Through Time:

Darwin's Goons

"I don't think it worked, Maurice," Rosetta sighed as she gave Maurice his book of mystics back. After two days of traveling on the river, they finally managed to enter the depths of a forest, which meant that Rosetta and the pilgrims had finally managed to leave the Eastern Highlands. Based on the owl clerk's recent calculations, traveling through the river would speed up the amount of time it would take to reach the shrine. By foot, it would have taken about a week or two, but sailing would most likely take them to their destination in about a week and a half.

Due to Rosetta's seasickness, they chose to take a small break and throw the anchor on a small isle located in the river, which grew bigger the more the convoy went further away from the Eastern Highlands. Rosetta literally hugged the dirt once she put her feet on the small isle's beach.

While the other pilgrims set up camp, Maurice offered to help Rosetta find a way to communicate with someone from Storybrooke using a spell from his book of mystics. The young demigoddess had tried to send a telepathic message to Fidget, but no response came.

"Plus I think I accidently sent him a blast that knocked him unconscious," Rosetta added as her head showed her a vision of the Batrishan falling unconscious on the floor of Mr. Gold's pawnshop after saying: ' _Uh. I wonder if this happens to anyone in this town on a regular basis._ '

"That's part of the spell's effects," Maurice said.

"Moe! What did we say about telepathic spells?" Harry scolded. The monk walked towards the two with an empty basket and a fishing rod at hand.

"I said I wouldn't use it on you!" Maurice defended himself. "And she did the spell, not me!"

"Sure, go ahead! Blame a kid for giving someone else a migraine!" Harry's comment made Rosetta scowl at Maurice. What the heck was it with that clerk, making a kid do his spells for him?

Harry then offered Rosetta to join him and Eglantine to go fishing in a small creak about five minutes away from the camp. Feeling like she could use a break and learn how to fish (she never could before due to her parents overprotectiveness), Rosetta accepted the monk's offer and walked with him across a few thickets to the creak, where Eglantine was standing, with one hand holding up her dress while the other managed to catch a fish. Should it be a surprise that the prioress was a swan?

"There you are, Rosie!" Eglantine said. "Would you please check the pile of clothes I placed next to my basket?" She pointed at a basket, with a couple of sea bass in it, standing by a set of rocks. Rosetta walked towards it and noticed the pile of clothes next to it. She picked them up and realized that they were child-sized.

"I thought you could use some fresh clothes since yours have gotten dirty ever since your arrival," Eglantine said as she tossed the fish she caught to Harry.

"Since when do you carry clothes for kids?" he asked as his bear hands caught the fish and placed it in his basket.

"All the sisters in my convent keep outfits for children in case they meet young girls who are to be placed in the convent," Eglantine explained.

Eglantine had made a point though about Rosetta's clothes being dirty. Now that she looked at them, the child couldn't believe how she had failed to notice their disgusting nature since she fell from the portal, jumped into a river, and threw up on a ship. The outfit Eglantine offered consisted of a medieval grey peasant dress and boots. It wasn't like the little dresses she wore during her early years back in the Enchanted Forest or the Storybrooke Public School uniform she loathed to wear or the other uniform outfits her parents had her wear in order to avoid getting attention.

"I'm going to need to take a bath first," she said.

 _About five minutes later_

The dress fit Rosetta very well and her black, red-streaked, hair was tied in a ponytail. She chose to help Eglantine catch fish in the creak and thus kept her boots on the rocks while her bare feet walked in the cool water.

"You look like a farm girl who's been living a peaceful life," Harry commented. He was sitting patiently on the rocks while he waited patiently for the hook of his fishing rod to catch a fish. Rosetta hadn't paid attention to the bear's comment, for as a novice, she struggled to catch a fish with her hands and kept falling in the water whenever she tried to catch one. Eglantine helped Rosetta up on her small feet.

"You need to relax," the prioress said as she held her hands close to her. "Let the water flow through your skin." Rosetta watched as the prioress' webbed feet put themselves in a relaxing pose. "Let the water fill your mind with a blank slate." She stood stiff, saying nothing, until her hand darted into the water and caught a passing sea bass. Eglantine threw the fish straight into her basket, which would have made any basketball player envious in Rosetta's opinion.

Harry whistled. "That's a neat trick, I'll admit."

"It's nothing really, just another meditating trick the nuns back in my convent taught me since I moved there." Eglantine gave an encouraging look at Rosetta. "You try it."

Rosetta took a deep breath and tried the swan's trick: she brought her hands to her chest, feeling her homesickness flow away from her heart. Her feet posed on the creaks watery rocks as she felt its water flow away the pain she endured for being treated abnormally. She let the water turn her visions into a blank slate.

An average-sized salmon began making its way and Rosetta's small hands did not miss their catch.

"Very good, Rosie!" Eglantine clapped her hands as the child passed the salmon to Harry, who licked his lips.

"Looks like we'll be having salmon for lunch today," he chuckled.

 _Later_

Sometimes, Rosetta felt like nothing could stay peaceful. I mean, sure you'd think that a demigoddess with advanced foresight powers would never take a break from being kidnapped, sucked into portals, hunted by goblins, nearly drowning in holy water, and being chosen by gods to tell them everything that occurred in her head.

But seriously, why did she, Eglantine, and Harry had to come back to camp with a great amount of fishes just to see the other pilgrims get kidnapped while Tristan was trying to fight off a bunch of medieval ninjas with tree symbols on their armors?

"They kidnapped the others!" Tristan shouted as he kicked one ninja in the stomach while sword dueling another at the same time.

"Darwin's goons!" Harry muttered as he grabbed a nearby stick and began to use it as a bo staff against the ninjas. "He never learns to leave us alone!"

"Who's Darwin?" Rosetta asked as Eglantine tried to bring her to safety. One thing she was certain is that they couldn't be referring to the English scientist who had the big evolutionary theory and the last time she heard the name, Isaac made it sound like this Darwin wasn't friendly.

"An evil warlock who clearly doesn't want us to reach the shrine of Canterbury before he does!" Eglantine held Rosetta fiercely as they and the two other pilgrims ended up being surrounded by the goons.

"There's too many off them!" Harry shouted. "We can't hold them much longer!"

"Rosetta!" Tristan got Rosetta's attention. "Isn't there any sort of power that you might have inherited from your father that could help us?"

Rosetta pondered until she came up with an idea. It was one spell that her father personally didn't enjoy doing unless it was necessary and she never thought she'd have to use.

"COVER YOUR EYES!" The pilgrims did what she said while the goons looked confused as they watched the young child hold out her hands, her brain focusing on her targets. Her eyes brightened with immensely bright rays of light and her hands summoned glowing hieroglyphics that began to swirl around Darwin's goons with cyan, neon light. Screams of a dozen men were heard, and by the time it was safe for the pilgrims to uncover their eyes, all they saw surrounding them was a pile of withered corpses.

"God forgive me..." gasped Eglantine. Rosetta glared at her own hands in horror.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't think my father's mummification spell would work!" She nearly cried until Tristan gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"Don't worry," he told her. "You won't ever have to use that spell ever again. I promise."

"What are we going to do?" Eglantine freaked out as Harry scavenged through the mummified corpses of Darwin's goons. "That stupid warlock kidnapped our friends and we're barely a week away from the shrine!"

"Darwin must have been clever enough to figure out that we'd reach the shrine much faster than him," Tristan concluded. "Obviously, by holding our friends hostage, he'll have us delay our pilgrimage."

"Guys, I found this in one of the dead goons' hands!" Harry came back with a scroll in his hands. "It's intact and guess whose familiar handwriting is on it?"

"I'm not gonna bet ten silver coins that it's from Darwin." Tristan shook his head while Harry read the scroll to them.

" _Pilgrims, if you wish to see your comrades alive and in one piece, I am ready to strike a deal. If you take your boat further into the river, there will come a part where it splits in half. Take the left one, which leads straight to sundown and meet me at the ancient ruin of the destroyed civilization by moonrise. Your powerful one, Darwin The Warlock._ " Harry passed the scroll around. "I'm willing to bet my own silver coins that we're headed for a trap."

"Well we don't have a choice," Eglantine said determinately. "We pilgrims made a pact when he united one another on this journey: we stick together no matter what. Trap or not, we _will_ rescue our friends."

"Ok, but we don't even know the exact place he wants us to go. 'Ancient ruin'? It could be anything!"

"Not necessarily." All eyes turned on Rosetta, who had just finished reading the scroll. "He says the rendezvous is at the ancient ruin of the destroyed civilization, and as far as I know, there's only been one extinct civilization in the East of the Enchanted Forest." She looked at Tristan, who instantly got the message.

"My motherland," he nodded. "Darwin wants to meet us at the Batrishan Sanctuary."


	15. Lust-Me Seaweed

Race Through Time:

Lust-Me Seaweed

The good part for the heroes was that once they arrived to the Storybrooke Harbor thanks to Anubis' teleportation spell, the boat where they had seen Midnight Sparkle from the magic globe was among the boats at the port. The bad part however was that the crazy alicorn wasn't onboard.

"She's nowhere in the boat," Emma grumbled after she and David came out of the boat along with a few of Anubis' hounds after five to ten minutes of inspecting the boat. Anubis knelt in front of Ared and listened to the jackal's growls.

"Ared says that her scent is still fresh, so she must have left the boat recently," he said as he rubbed Ared's back in a caring manner.

"So she can't be far," Emma said.

"Precisely."

A howl was heard coming from the boat and out came a jackal about one quarter shorter than Ared dragging something from his mouth. The closer it got to the group and the more the heroes could see what it was dragging: a small bundle of green seaweed.

"Hey, that's the same seaweed we saw Midnight collecting," David said as Emma used a pair of tweezers to grab a sample of the plant and put it in a plastic bag.

"Nice job, Ketabi," Marion told the jackal. Ketabi let out a happy howl. Meanwhile, Anubis grabbed a strand of the seaweed and took several sniffs of it until a suspicious look appeared on his face.

"What's wrong?" David noticed Anubis' look.

"Before I make wrong assumptions, we need to return to the pawnshop," the god said.

 _Later_

Belle had come to the pawnshop after leaving Amanda under Mary Margaret's care in order to help the heroes figure out what on earth was so particular about the seaweed. They watched as she flipped through a book of mystical botany until she landed on a page with a scientific illustration of the plant in question.

"A _concupiscitis mepelagus_ ," Belle said. "That's what it is."

"Meaning 'Lust-Me Seaweed' in Latin," Marion added.

"What else does it say about the seaweed?" Emma asked Belle. The bookworm nodded and turned back to her reading.

"'The _concupiscitis mepelagus_ is a very rare seaweed found only in the oceans of the Northeastern Hemispheres. This algae is essential for the fabrication of the Lustful Curse,'" she read out loud. "Lustful Curse?"

"A not-so distant cousin of the Curse of the Empty-Hearted," Mr. Gold said.

"You mean that spell that's supposed to make its victim believe they love somebody that Regina wanted to use on Henry?" Emma's eyes popped open at the mention of the spell Regina had tried to use on Henry after Mary Margaret had killed Cora.

"Time out!" Marion said. "I thought that forceful love was against the rules of magic!"

"It is," Anubis said. "But nothing in the laws of magic says that you can force someone to _lust_ you. Love isn't the same as lust: the first one is the real, sincere feeling that you develop in your heart for someone's personal characteristics. Lust, on the other hand, is obsessive desire for the someone's physical appearance, luscious scent, and intimacy factor."

"And you know this how?" Anubis' wife gave the god a skeptical look.

"Do I have to remind you of Discordia?"

"Never mind."

"Isn't there a cure for the Lustful Curse?" Belle asked her own husband.

"Well, there's one," he said quietly. "If the victim is currently in love, then the spell won't work."

"Then it won't work," a voice said. The heroes were surprised to see Killian coming from behind the curtain that separated the pawnshop from the back. "Fitzgerald has had only one love in his entire life, and that was Isabella the Princess of Aldorada, and she's unfortunately dead."

"Even so, the cure wouldn't work." Gold's face filled up with a grim expression. "When I mean currently in love, I mean that the love interest must be still alive. For instance, if you were the victim that Midnight sought," Gold referred to Killian, "the Lustful Curse won't work because of your current love for Emma Swan. But suppose you didn't love her but your old, deceased Milah; then the spell would work because Milah is an old flame."

"Translation: the Batrishan is doomed," Marion concluded. "Anyway we can, I don't know, _delay_ the fabrication of the spell?"

"According to the book, if Midnight Sparkle wants to achieve the Lustful Curse, she needs three more ingredients." Belle looked at her book. "Maybe if we can figure out where she can find them in Storybrooke as well as where she's hiding, then maybe we can capture her and send her back in Pandora's Box."

"Sounds like a plan," Anubis agreed. "I'll have my hounds track down the alicorn using the Equestrian Dust. Speaking of tracking, what should we do to figure out where my daughter is?"

"She's in the Eastern Highlands," Killian and Gold said in unison.

"You...you found her?" Marion gasped. She grabbed Killian and began shaking him. "How? Where are the Eastern Highlands? How can we reach her? How will she come back home?" Emma had to pull Marion away in order to prevent her from making the pirate sick. Suddenly, the curtains were pulled and out came Fidget holding a pack of ice on the head.

"Wait, you should be resting!" Belle shut her book closed before she and Killian rushed towards the Batrishan to prevent him from walking away. Unfortunately, a purple force field surrounding him prevented them from even touching him.

" **What is it with people driving me nuts today**?" Fidget exclaimed. He then began shouting at Anubis: " **Why the hell did you teach your daughter to blast people in the head?** "

"Excuse me?" Anubis was confused.

"Allow me," Mr. Gold said. "Shortly after you left, the Batrishan used the magic globe to locate your daughter and discovered that she was in the Eastern Highlands back in the Enchanted Forest..."

"She's back in the Enchanted Forest?" Marion gasped before suddenly giving a grateful hug to a baffled Batrishan. "Oh thank you!"

"I'd say you're welcome... **if she didn't blast me in the head!** " Fidget roughly pushed away Marion, who landed in Anubis' watchful.

"Oh, and there also came a part where Rosetta tried to send Fitzgerald a telepathic message, only he got a blast on the head that gave him quite a migraine," Killian added.

"A side effect for telepathic messaging, really," Mr. Gold added.

"I didn't know Rosie could do such spells," David told Anubis, who was just as surprised as everyone else.

"Don't look at me! I tried to avoid her using magic too often. You know how it goes for people who use magic too often, especially dark one: the more you use it, the more it consumes you until you can't bear to split up with it."

"And you couldn't teach her to use some sort of magical object that works like a phone instead of giving me migraines?" Fidget spat.

"Easy, Fitzgerald," Killian said. "You need rest..."

"Indeed I do! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to lay my head on my pillow back in my cottage, and if I see anybody else bothering me again, I'm putting myself in a sleeping curse!" He made a hand gesture that summoned a cloud of purple smoke to surround him until he disappeared from the pawnshop.

"I don't want to imagine what it's like to be immortal like him," grumbled Marion.


	16. The Friendly Visit

Race Through Time:

The Friendly Visit

Fidget really wanted to scream when he heard the door knock. The first way he wanted to scream was out of frustration because he made it **quite** clear to the heroes that he wanted to rest and be left alone, especially while he was tucked in bed wearing only a pair of trousers and reading **The Poetic Wondering**. And the last way he wanted to scream was out of fright at the idea that Midnight Sparkle might have broken through the barrier spell that he casted around the cottage a few hours ago and worse, that she'd find him in his bed...

"Fitzgerald? Is everything alright? You put a barrier spell that goes past your own backyard!" Fidget's ears perked up at the sound of a certain familiar voice. It could have been trick of course, but he wanted to make doubly sure. He got out of bed, grabbed his purple robe and put it on while walking out of his room and sown the wooden staircase. His fast walking didn't help the migraine that he was having, but he didn't stop in his footsteps. He reached the door and opened it. A sigh escaped his mouth when he saw the person he was hoping for standing on his front porch.

Theresa looked quite lovely today. She wore a burgundy trench coat that reached all the way down to her hips, grey dress pants, and black slingback shoes. A black cloche hat crowned her long golden hair, leaving her faint magenta streak to hang in front of her face. She just stood there, hands in her pocket, as if she just dropped by for a normal visit. This was quite an awkward moment for the Batrishan, because as he was rushing downstairs, he didn't have the opportunity to straighten his robe properly, therefore giving his visitor a visual of his exposed torso.

"Oh...uh...Hi, Theresa," he stuttered. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," she said quietly. Her eyes slightly blinked at the sight of Fidget's current appearance. "And um...why is there a barrier spell out there?" She pointer away from the door towards a quick flash of purple light that moved above the cottage and in the air as if a serpent were trying to slither on top of a dome.

Fidget hesitated. "Would you prefer that we talk about it inside?"

 _Later_

"So," Theresa said, "you got yourself an alicorn with a creepy obsession stalking you."

They were in Fidget's living room, which was a very comfy place including a couch, a table full of the weekly newspapers, a big bookshelf full of books, and a small fireplace with a fire burning on logs and spreading its warmth throughout the room. An old portrait of Geneva Denada Cortés that Fidget managed to recover in the past hung on the wall just above the fireplace. It was a nice, electricity-free environment for Fidget to relax whenever he didn't feel like his wrath was invading his soul.

Theresa made space on the table in order to settle the tray with two teacups, a teakettle, and a bowl of chicken soup.

"That's pretty much it," Fidget sighed. He was sitting on the couch and rubbing his head with frustration. "And now she wants to use a Lustful Curse on me."

"That spell meant to force someone into lusting on you unless that someone is in love?" Theresa sat next to Fidget and handed him the bowl of soup. "Have some. It will help with the headache."

"Thanks." The Batrishan took a sip of the soup. It was warm and surprisingly creamy; he didn't recall eating such a delicacy since his old life in Aldorada. "You know, you cook very well."

Theresa blushed while she drank from her teacup. "Glad you like it."

"That reminds me. How come you know about the Lustful Curse?"

"I've learned a thing or two about magic. It runs in the family."

"Guess that explains why..."

"I crossed through your protection barrier so easily? I think you might have done some sort of miscalculation while casting it. Otherwise, the chances of that alicorn breaking into your cottage are high."

Fidget shuddered at the thought of Midnight Sparkle walking easily through his barrier and right into his cottage. The last things he'd want were the Lustful Curse to hit him and obsessive lust for Midnight to overwhelm him to the point of insanity.

Theresa let out a brief chuckle. "You almost remind me of my mother. Before she met my father, there was this...creepy guy who had an obsessive crush on her and she was really sickened by it. He even at one point forced her into the altar and would have nearly gotten his way."

"What prompted him to give up?" Fidget put away his empty bowl of soup and took the spare teacup.

"My mother never told these specific details to me, so I'm not really sure. But something must have made the guy mad enough to 'cancel off' the wedding. My mother still has nightmares about the guy."

"I'm...sorry," Fidget said. The fire cracked in the chimney as they sat silent for a while.

"I, uh, started reading **The Poetic Wondering** ," Fidget said. "You know, the book you left in my kitchen?"

Theresa's head perked up at the mention of the book. "Oh! You read it? I hoped you liked. It was quite a surprise for me when I found it in the town library while I was looking for history books..."

"History books?" The Batrishan frowned.

"Aside from the diverse volunteering services, I work as a part-time teacher at the Storybrooke Public School. It's not much concerning the wage, but I still manage to use it and my part of my family fortune to pay up for a suitable apartment for myself."

"You don't live with your family?"

"No. My father and brother were murdered, and my mother...well...she chose to let desperation take the best of her..." A mournful look appeared on her as she said those words. Fidget was familiar with that look: he saw it almost everytime he stared at himself in the mirror.

"I lost my loved ones as well," he said. "The plague took my mother, my father and ex-fiancée were...murdered, and the country I lived for is now as extinct as the fossils."

"I guess that leaves us a few things in common, huh?" Theresa looked at him as she said those words. His red irises met her green ones as they slowly began to close. Fidget felt his hand reaching out for Theresa and bringing her closer to him. The warmth of their breaths nearly collided with one another, and for once the Batrishan felt like a warmth he loved so much in the past was returning to him, filling his soul with joy.

Right when his lips were about to meet hers, the two stopped, both realizing that this might be too fast. They've only met a month ago and this was the second time they interacted. Such...a relationship was too quick to jump into right away.

"I'm sorry," Theresa said quietly. "I...didn't want to insult the memory of your ex-fiancée...and to sound like the alicorn stalking you."

"I understand." Fidget gently pulled himself away from Theresa in order to give space between the two of them. "And I'm sorry as well: I don't want to make it seem like I'm...abusing some certain feelings out of selfishness."

Theresa gave him a confused look that indicated the fact that she didn't understand what he meant. "The Lustful Curse Midnight Sparkle is planning to use on me can be thwarted if I'm currently in love," Fidget explained. "And...I've never loved any one that way since my ex-fiancée died. I always feared that being with another would dishonor her resting soul. Plus, after everything I've done that led me to my current status, I don't think I could ever get a second chance at love."

A sad, yet comprehensible sigh came out of Theresa as she calmly said: "I understand." She looked out the window and noticed that nighttime had fallen. "I should get going. The lane can be dangerous after dark."

The two got off the couch and Fidget escorted Theresa to the door while he felt a heavy pain in the chest.

"Thank you though for your visit," Fidget said while Theresa put on her jacket and hat.

She gave a weak, but sincere smile. "Of course. And Fidget...I do wish you good luck when you face the alicorn."

Fidget's chest pain ached even more: that woman was hoping he'd live even though the chances of him surviving the Lustful Curse were slim.

"I'll see you at _Dutchman's Teapot_ if I live through it all," Fidget promised. The blonde woman smiled before walking towards the Batrishan and planting a warm, soft kiss on his left cheek that petrified the Batrishan even five minutes after she was done.

"In case I don't see you again," she said tearfully before walking off the front porch, through the gate, and into the small road that led through the woods.

"Isabella, what have I done?" Fidget asked himself as his hand caressed the kissed cheek in the middle of the night.


	17. The Batrishan Sanctuary

Race Through Time:

The Batrishan Sanctuary

Owl hoots echoed in the night as Rosetta and the three pilgrims sailed through the left currant of the river. They spent almost the entire day on the boat. By the time the sun began to set, the group had gone miles away from the isle and a big distance away from the Eastern Highlands. The water level was getting lower and darker that Harry had to get off the boat and pull it with a rope while walking in the water, which got colder and darker as they went further down the river. By the time darkness began to fill the sky, gray mist could be seen floating on the river's surface.

"Your motherland is rather creepy, Tristan!" Harry called out to the squire while squinting in order to have a better view despite the fog.

"We haven't reached it yet," Tristan said quietly as he searched through his satchel until he pulled out three wooden amulets and tossed one at Harry. "Catch!"

The monk didn't miss the catch and caught the amulet. "An amulet of Ashiva?" He asked after inspecting it.

"The Evil One was heartless enough to unleash diverse horrors upon the Batrishan Sanctuary," Tristan said. He handed the other two amulets to Eglantine and Rosetta. "Only Ashiva's blessing can protect anyone when stepping inside our ruined city."

"That's what the amulets are for?" Eglantine asked while putting the amulet around her neck.

"Indeed. Ashiva is not known for being merciful to those who wronged him; the Batrishan priests who tried to kill the Evil One's child after Svjetla's death learned that fact the hard way."

"Your god has a thing against infanticide?" Harry asked.

"That, and killing someone of his bloodline. Svjetla's family was said to be descended from Ashiva himself, thus making the Evil One's child the descendant of Ashiva as well. Or at least that's what the old Batrishans believe." Tristan sighed. "The least we can do is pray that Ashiva protects us as we step inside the Batrishan Sanctuary."

"Didn't he give you your medallion, Tristan?" Rosetta's question was rather surprising to the pilgrims.

"How did you know about that?" Tristan frowned.

"I read it in a book, _Batrishans: An Ancient Species_ , from the library back in Storybrooke. Apparently, once a Batrishan is born, Ashiva is supposed to give him or her a medallion depending on his or her role in Batrishan society and the soul's worth. Is that true?"

The Batrishan's only response was to pull out something from his shirt: a medallion made of medium garnet with a depiction of Ashiva guiding a Batrishan out of some sort of dark cave. "This is among the new medallions that our god gave the survivors' newborns, specifically for those who became loyal to the king and his court. My father and I both got medium garnet medallions."

"What's the garnet supposed to symbolize?" Eglantine asked.

"Protection," Tristan answered.

"Well that makes sense," Rosetta commented. "Your father was the Knight going on crusades to protect both the kingdom of Camberley and traditional Batrishan customs, and you've been protecting the other pilgrims during your travels."

Tristan smiled. "Why thank you. Which reminds me: does your Batrishan friend Fidget have his own medallion?"

"He does. It's very golden, with an illustration of Ashiva wielding fire in his four arms while a bunch of Batrishans are kneeling before him..."

" _Pure gold_? A carving of Ashiva the Fire-Wielder?" Tristan's eyebrows gave quite a scowl that made Rosetta cringe. "Your friend is almost 300 years old and he _just happens_ to be born from the Batrishan priests with a very rare gold that hardly comes to _any_ Batrishan priest?"

"Uh..."

"Quit the yapping!" Harry called from the mist! "I see a grotto at the end of the river!"

 _Later_

From the outside, the entrance of the grotto was shaped like Batrishans in antiquity outfits, which almost reminded Rosetta of a blend between Roman and Middle Eastern clothing, standing upright, their open wings forming an arch, and their hands joined together in union.

"The Gates of Cuvanje," Tristan had said when their boat pulled into the dark grotto, full of more mist, stalagmites and stalactites sprouting off the ceiling and floor like broken mirror shards trying desperately to go back to their original source, and a small coast made of coal that made irritating noises when Harry pulled the boat onto it and secured it. "One of the four gates leading in and out of the Batrishan Sanctuary. This used to be a much lovelier beach until the Evil One spread his wrath."

"Were the stalagmites and stalactites actually made of broken glass?" Eglantine asked as her webbed feet tried to avoid stepping on any of the shards.

"They used to be crystals. Apparently, when the sun shot its rays from the entrance of the grotto, the light would reflect onto the crystals and brightened the grotto even during the darkest of storms. I guess the Evil One wanted to give us the pun of seven years of bad luck by turning the crystals into broken glass."

"More like several centuries of bad luck," Harry grunted.

The group then walked up a stoned staircase going upward, leading out of the grotto. Ironically, the sounds of bats flying echoed onto the tunnel's walls. Each step the pilgrims took made disturbing splashing sounds.

Eglantine gave a weak look at the black substance her webbed feet were walking on. "Tell me this isn't Batrishan blood," she said sheepishly.

"Nope, that's just bat dung," Tristan said casually. The prioress squealed in disgust while Rosetta, on the other hand, didn't really mind the dung. After all, there have been dozens of days when she walked onto the jackal poop that her half-brothers kept trailing around after eating.

Harry, who was leading the group through the tunnel with a lit torch at hand, pointed to an approaching light up ahead. "We must be getting close."

They walked a few more steps until they reached an opening that led to a small cliff giving away the worst view in the entire planet.

"Welcome to the Batrishan Sanctuary," Tristan said mournfully to his companions.

 _A few minutes later_

Back when Rosetta was still a young child in the Enchanted Forest, her father had told her stories of how sometimes, the diverse underworlds ruled by gods had certain aspects depending on the souls that resided, and those occupied by the cursed and sinned were usually the most apocalyptic. Rosetta had seen in a vision what the Ancient Egyptian underworld looked like for such bad souls: ruined temples, pyramids falling apart like dominos, the Nile drying, and corpse-like animals terrorizing the souls. It was almost as bad as Egypt's state during Moses' unleashing of the ten plagues, and even Anubis himself admitted that he did not enjoy ferrying souls to that underworld.

Seeing the state of the Batrishan Sanctuary only reminded Rosetta of that vision as she walked the dead streets of the Batrishan Sanctuary.

The city itself was located in a ring of cliffs with one river coming from another grotto in the West and flowing through the Sanctuary. Some of the cliffs had masses of rocks, bigger than mountains, crushing farmhouses in what would have been the agricultural sectors of the Batrishan Sanctuary during landslides. The river itself looked black and icky, and when the group had walked through a bridge standing on top of the river, its dreadful stench was one of tar and its shores were full of dried coal, destroyed boats, and skeletons of what could have been fish in nets.

Rosetta clung onto Tristan, who held her protectively as they walked through plazas filled with nothing but dried crash, crushed stone sidewalks, destroyed statues of Batrishans, and dead trees hosting locusts and other bugs that no one wanted to identify. Destroyed Greco-Roman houses and temples, burned out Arabian-like street markets, grey clouds blocking the sun...

No life could be seen in the Batrishan Sanctuary. This was by far the worst thing that Rosetta had ever seen in her life.

"The Batrishan Sanctuary looks worse than the way my father described it," Tristan said. The group had decided to take a brief rest stop in a house that might have been the home of a Batrishan historian and his or her family, judging by the ruins of it.

"Did he come here?" Eglantine sat on a nearby rock, since trying to sit on one of the ancient mahogany chairs would not have been a good idea.

"He tried...once," Tristan sighed as he swiped his hand on an old tapestry of Ashiva looking down at the Batrishan Sanctuary (in a much glorious way) from the Heavens. "My father wasn't the first among several of the next generation to have tried to return to the Batrishan Sanctuary in order to find more clues concerning both Ashiva's prophecy and the race through time...And he wasn't the first to have narrowly escaped certain death. It all happened before I was even born..."

Meanwhile, Rosetta, out of curiosity, dared to look around the house until she found what could have been an old study. It definetly looked much older than the one in the Sorcerer's Mansion back in Storybrooke, with a medieval ashwood table and chair, bookshelf, a glass hanging lamp, and one red carpet. The only things messy about this room were the insane amount of dust, books and scrolls spread all over the floor as if no one called the house cleaning services. Ironically, out of all the things Rosetta had seen so far in this ruined, apocalyptic city, this was by far the cleanest area ever.

Rosetta managed to find a handle on the wall that brought the lamp down from the ceiling once Rosetta pulled the handle. She took out two granite stones that Harry had given her (the pilgrims each kept granite stones in case they needed fire for emergencies) from her dress's pocket and tried rubbing them together in order to create some fire to light up the lamp. She managed to create a small flame, but once she tried to put it through the lamp's opening, it extinguished itself. She tried again several times, but the flame got away once more.

 _Maybe it only responds to magical fire_ , Rosetta thought to herself. She knew the risks of using magic she was unfamiliar with, but this was worth the shot. She had seen in both real life and in her visions the way witchcraft users like Regina, the Dark One, Zelena, and Maleficent summoned fireballs from their hands, but she preferred to use a technique she had seen Fidget use once when she came to his cottage on another one of their Tea Thursdays and he couldn't use the stove to heat up the tea kettle.

Rosetta took a deep breath, put her hands together, and rubbed them. She began to feel small warmth growing on her skin, and when her hands opened, she saw a small, black single flame fit for a candle. Unlike Fidget's Batrishan black fire, which emitted heat of rage, fury, and darkness, Rosetta could feel that the fire she just created was the one of the Ancient Egyptians: black as a symbol of both death and a resurrection. The fragile, helpless child in her was now gone.

She brought her flame inside the lamp, which instantly lit up with a bright, neon dark light. Surprisingly, the light from the lamp formed a single ray pointing at one of the shelves in the bookshelf. Unlike the other shelves, this one was filled with what appeared to be books, but when Rosetta touched the 'books', she realized that it was only a wooden painting of books. Her hands did some scavenging until one of her fingers touched the light's center on the painting. The painting dissolved like magic, revealing a secret compartment with a single scroll in it.

"Whoever owned this place must have been some sort of sorcerer," she told herself as she grabbed the scroll. The ancient parchment didn't even turn into dust at the girl's touch; whoever owned this must have casted a protection spell on it.

"Rosie, where are you?" Harry called from downstairs. "The moon is about to rise and Darwin is expecting us!"

"Coming!" Rosie began to run out of the study after hiding and securing the scroll underneath the layers of her dress.


	18. Darwin

Race Through Time:

Darwin

"So what's the 'ancient ruin' that Darwin referred to in his letter?" Harry asked. The group had left their hideout and made their way through the ruined city once more as the moon began to illuminate the sky with ominous lights pale as death.

"I can think of only one obvious place," Tristan said. He pointed at the destroyed street that laid in front of him, but it wasn't the street he was pointing at: he was pointing at a distant, tall building that might probably take about five minutes to get there by foot. "The Batrishan Palace."

"You mean the old home of the Batrishan royalty?" Eglantine asked. "Why does it still exist?"

"Maybe it's an old monument?" Harry suggested to the prioress, although it was hard to tell if whether or not he was serious or joking. Rosetta saw an image in her head: a group of Batrishans, male and female, all wearing golden medallions and some sort of toga, standing in front of a large, white palace while a crowd of Batrishans applauded them.

"Did the Palace become the headquarters of the Batrishan priests?" Rosetta asked. "I think I saw a vision of it in my head."

"You're correct, unfortunately," Tristan said. He avoided stepping on a puddle of glass shards. "After the last Batrishan prince, Bartok Ashiva Rex, abdicated the throne in order to leave the Batrishan Sanctuary and see the world, the king quickly died from the fever he was having despite the healers attempts to cure him. Without an heir to the throne, the Sanctuary nearly went through a dark age of chaos until Bartok's distant cousin, Vidovit, got the idea to assemble a group of people among the Batrishans who are the most faithful to Ashiva and have them rule the Batrishan Sanctuary."

"Wait! If the prince had a distant cousin, how come the cousin didn't become king?" Harry asked. "I mean, if Vidovit was related to the royal family, then he was eligible to attain the crown, right?"

"Hard to say. As I've mentioned, he was a distant cousin, and according to the laws of Ashiva, only a descendant of the god with the closest link to his godhood can obtain the crown. Bartok, the king, and all of their predecessors have had very strong links to Ashiva's godhood. But Bartok was the last one to be close to the godhood and he refused to take on his royal duties by abdicating, thus ending the legacy with him. As for Vidovit, his link to Ashiva wasn't very strong, and even if he was related to Bartok, Ashiva didn't send any sign saying that Vidovit should become the next king."

"But did Ashiva say anything about Vidovit's idea of the priests' formation?" Rosetta asked.

"Surprisingly, Ashiva _did_ agree on that. He was even the one who sent the golden medallions to those who would become the Batrishan Priests, the unit that would lead the Batrishans, and he was the one who chose Vidovit as the Head Priest."

"What a twist of fate," Harry said sarcastically.

"But it didn't end well, right?" Rosetta was now walking close to Tristan, who gave her a quick glance as she said her question. "I mean, the priests must have been bad enough for Ashiva to refuse them protection, especially when the Evil One came."

"It's more complicated," Tristan answered in a sad tone. "At first, Vidovit and the other priests led the Sanctuary without any difficulty and brought peace and tranquility. But you know how time goes."

"Generations, even _centuries_ , passed." Rosetta got the message. "As time flew, they began to lose their memories of what the purpose of their duty was. The group proliferated and began to pass out strict rules that both damaged and kept the peace. And Vidovit...his legacy was forgotten, lost among the numerous priests who began to take over the city."

"Ashiva must have started to see how immoral his servants were becoming throughout the generations," Eglantine joined. "That must be why pure golden medallions became so rare among the Batrishan priests: their lord must not have deemed their souls of any pure value."

"And then there was the thing you said about that priestess that got raped." Harry coughed. "What was her name again?"

"Svjetla," Tristan answered.

"Right. You said that some of your people believed her to be Ashiva's distant descendant. When she got violated and impregnated by the Evil One, the priests went after her baby's death. You mentioned how Ashiva detested infanticide and killing his family."

"Now you all know why the priests' were doomed by Ashiva." Tristan looked at the Batrishan Palace as they got closer to it. "Hope you don't mind us going to the most haunted place in all of the Batrishan Sanctuary."

 _Eventually_

Rosetta had to admit: for an ancient ruined castle, the Batrishan Palace looked like an impressive hybrid, with an architectural variety that went from U.S Capitol rotunda design, Croatian to Roman towers, Ancient Greek columns made of pure marble, and a large outdoor garden way much better than the one of the Taj Mahal.

"Okay," Rosetta commented in awe. "This would _totally_ put every single historical monument back home to shame."

"Once we save the others, remind me to get earmuffs," Harry grumbled. "I can predict Maurice doing endless mumbling on how great the architecture is here."

They saw the light of what seemed to be a bonfire in the front steps of the palace. The closer they got, the more the scene became clearer and horrifying to the group: the bonfire was occupied by at least fifty more of Darwin's goons and burning underneath an enormous statue of a headless statue of Ashiva. Something was hanging from one of the idol's arms: a metal cage, and in it were the five other pilgrims.

"Finally! It took you a long time!" Isaac shouted from the cage. Darwin's goons overheard the reeve shouting and had the group surrounded in less then ten seconds.

"Remind me to turn you into grilled bacon once we're done," Harry grumbled.

"Finally!" a voice boomed. "I was concerned that you wouldn't come!"

The one who spoke was a tall man with skin so pale that you'd think the fever hit him for centuries. His face was crowned with a dark unibrow, an old Dutch beard, and dry hair pulled up in a ponytail that literally looked like it was an actual pony's tail. He was dressed in some sort of burning red-and-black shirt and hakama with Asian flame patterns. In his hand was a dragon naginata staff with the blade made of some sort of black stone.

"Darwin is a Japanese warlock?" Rosetta frowned. "Well this is new."

"I'm Chinese, not Japanese!" Darwin exclaimed in a frustrated tone that made it sound like he had heard that comment several times. "Just because I'm into Japanese fashion doesn't mean I'm from that country!"

"Right, and I'm the Wicked Witch of the West," chuckled Anaïs. Some of her friends in the cage gave her joke some snickers.

"SILENCE!"

"We came as you asked, Darwin," Tristan said coldly. "Now what do you want from us?"

"Forgive me if this was the only way I could get you animals to come here," Darwin began until his golden hawk eyes got a closer look at Rosetta. Stunned, he walked down the steps and straight towards the group. Seeing him analyze her like some scientist inspecting an animal before vivisection with his creepy eyes almost made Rosetta cringe, but reminding herself of Fidget's yellow eyes with crimson irises reminded her that this warlock was no match. Nevertheless, it didn't stop Tristan from placing a protective arm in front of her to separate her from Darwin.

"Since when do you pilgrims travel with a human demigoddess?" Darwin asked curiously.

"It's none of your business," Tristan spat.

"What? It doesn't hurt to ask." Darwin bent closer in order to have a better look at the child, only for Rosetta to instantly kick him on the right knee. It must have been really hard, since Darwin yelped in pain and nearly fell a few inches close to the bonfire if one of his goons didn't catch him. Three other goons tried to aim their weapons at Rosetta, still protected by Tristan, until Darwin gave them a 'halt' gesture with his hand.

"Serves you right!" Aaron called out to Darwin. "Kidnapping us, hanging us over a bonfire, and now assaulting a child? Your actions make you rather unholy, Darwin!"

"I don't know what's keeping me from turning her into a toad," Darwin muttered as he got up and dusted his clothes off.

"Maybe...because if you did, then we might get another wrath of the god similar to what happened to the locals here." Harry motioned the ruined city that surrounded them.

"Let's go back to the main topic," Tristan told Darwin. "You said you'd return our friends in exchange for a deal. What do you want? Because if it's for us to give up on our quest, than forget it!"

"Calm yourself, squire." Darwin paced around, with the flames giving him an ominous shadow. "All I want is your map towards the shrine of Canterbury. If you give it to me, than your friends will be released."

The pilgrims, from the ground and from the cage, made uneasy faces: on one hand, they didn't want to give away the only piece of information they had to reach the shrine, but on the other hand, they didn't want to be cooked into a bonfire. Rosetta then saw the vision she needed in her mind.

"Darwin is lying," she said out loud. "Even if we did give him the map, he'll still kill us."

"What proof could a simpleton like you possibly have of me being capable of such deception?" Darwin scoffed.

"She's right," Tristan declared while he, Eglantine, and Harry pulled out their weapons despite the numerous goons surrounding them. "After all, you've done numerous misfits just to prevent us from even reaching the shrine."

"Frankly, I don't even see why he needs the shrine to grant him any solution," Isaac commented. "I mean, he's already got so much power..."

"Power?" Darwin chuckled. "Why would I want more power than what I already have? No, I want the shrine to help me get rid of a wicked enemy that I wish to meant once more...so that I may crush him on the spot."

"You've got so many enemies and there's only one you want to crush so badly?" Maurice asked. "This is _such_ a low point in your warlock career."

"It wouldn't be such a low point!" Darwin snapped as the fire cracked. "That demon **humiliated** me! Look at what he did to my skin!" To that, he unbuttoned the front of his shirt and revealed a ghastly wound all over his chest, exposing a butchery amount of flesh, bone, and muscle. The scariest part, however, was that they could see parts of his heart pumping with life and blood.

 _Now I know why mommy swore to never expose me to horror movies_ , Rosetta thought to herself.

"Cover yourself!" Eglantine said, disgusted. "Your unholy body is..."

"Disgusting, isn't it? And haven't you noticed something about the shape of my wounds?" Darwin said angrily as he pointed at his ghastly wound, revealing its shape to be similar to those that one would have gotten if some sort of savaged, clawed beast had tried to maul him.

"Why didn't you use your powers to hide the wound?" Maurice asked curiously.

"Believe me, I did. But that metal-winged demon had his claws dipped with some sort of venom, courtesy of my brother Chaucer..."

"Oh, Chaucer! The friendly, benevolent, and immortal warlock who warned us about you three summers ago?" Dwight grinned. "Yeah, he was a great guy.

"For a great guy, he certainly knew how to get me injured and have my aggressor attack me with a venom that would prevent my wound to heal, thus giving me a humiliating appearance!"

"Why didn't he just do it by himself?" Aaron frowned. "Why on earth would he need to send an attacker?"

"I asked myself the same thing. Turns out he made a deal with the aggressor...it had something to do with 'granting him immortality'."

"Chaucer can't grant immortality," Harry said in an unconvinced tone. Darwin took no notice as he re-buttoned his shirt and then addressed Tristan.

"You know what else was weird? He sort of looked like a member of your species, only much more dark skinned."

"What?" Tristan was baffled.

"Oh good Lord," Rosetta groaned as she realized who Darwin was referring to. She facepalmed herself. "Don't tell me that he actually did something like that!"

"Who?" Tristan asked.

"My friend Fidget," Rosetta sighed. "He tried this thing of making deals with five immortals in order to get invincibility." Everyone stared at her in disbelief while Darwin looked like he was about to explode.

"Don't tell me he _actually_ succeeded," Tristan said quietly.

"Well let's see: there was the Dark One, there was the Queen of Hearts, and Kaïra, and now I just learned that Chaucer was one of the five. I still can't remember who the fifth one was..."

"Rosetta, I think that Tristan's remark was rhetorical," Isaac said from the cage.

"Oh," Rosetta realized.

"So, since you're friends with the one my brother send to savagely maul me," Darwin hissed, "I hope you don't mind me killing you."


	19. The Masked Girl

Race Through Time:

The Masked Girl

Rosetta was seriously considering slapping Fidget one thousand and one times once she found her way back to Storybrooke.

Because honestly, having Darwin chase her throughout the ruins of the Batrishan Palace while he was trying to shoot deadly blasts of magic at her was not the way she wanted to finish her life.

As predicted, Darwin ordered his goons to cut down the rope that held the cage containing the captive pilgrims in order to have them fall to their fiery doom. Fortunately, Tristan and Eglantine used their wings to fly and grab the cage before it and their friends got roasted. Unfortunately, that left Darwin enough room to begin targeting Rosetta while Harry was busy dealing with a majority of the goons. The only smart thing left for the child was to run for her life while the vengeful warlock ran after her and far from the busy crowd, up the main staircase, and into the palace.

The floors and walls were so cracked and full of rumble that Rosetta nearly mistook this place as Medusa's lair from the 'Clash of The Titan' movie clips she had dared to watch one time on Youtube even though her parents had strictly told her not to. Good thing she did, though, because otherwise she wouldn't have been able to jump from rock to rock and nearly avoid the rocks that led to some sort of black fiery pit.

"There's no way you can escape my wrath, you vile demigod scum!" Darwin shouted from somewhere in the ruins. This situation was getting beyond desperate.

Rosetta's feet were tiring very quickly as she ran through a hallway that seemed to lead to bed quarters. She didn't know how far Darwin was from her, but she knew that if she didn't take at least five minutes off, then she'd be weaker in front of Darwin.

Rosetta quickly spotted an open, rusty door. Her push got it to dissolve into dust. She quickly hid behind the bed, her resting body aching all over while battling noises were heard coming from outside.

What the heck was she going to do? Darwin could pop up at any moment!

Her panicked hand clenched the bed's ragged sheets, which caused her to have a horrible vision: an innocent Batrishan priestess making an innocent wish in this exact room, followed by darkness, screams, blood, and eventually, a growing womb.

"I'm in the same room where Svjetla got raped by the Evil One!" Rosetta realized. "This can't be a coincidence!"

"Take my advice and don't even think about making a wish," a voice that came out of nowhere spoke from Rosetta's right side. Rosetta nearly yelped when she saw somebody sitting right next to her, but that somebody covered her mouth. "You want Darwin to hear you?"

"Who the hell are you?" Rosetta asked as she stared at the person who spoke to her. The person was dressed in some sort of medieval black church garb and some sort of Cuban Devil mask covered her face. Rosetta could tell that the person was a girl due to her orb shaped breasts, dark feminine voice that could have belonged to someone around the age of Violet, Henry's girlfriend, and long jet black hair that trailed down from the mask to her curved waist. For some reason, however, the demigoddess had no vision related to the masked girl.

"My master put a blocking spell on your foreshadowing powers to prevent you from having any vision relating to me," the girl said in a very sour tone. "You didn't notice it; you were too busy leading his withered beasts to that river of holy water."

Rosetta realized what the girl was referring to and began to back away. "You're working for the Evil One, aren't you?" she asked coldly. The girl's mask turned to look at her with painted eyes that hid her real ones.

"Yes, but I didn't ask for the job," she muttered. "So don't worry. I'm not going to kill you."

"And why should I trust you? Your boss tried to kill me!"

"He did," the masked girl confessed. "That's because when he saw through his powers that you got involved with the race through time, he feared that you'd warn his enemies of his plans, but he had a small change of mind after he tried sending a couple of his goblins to kill you."

Rosetta frowned in confusion. "What made him change his mind?"

"You've got connections to two Batrishans, both representing a different time in the eras of Batrishans: your squire friend out there represents the future Batrishans while some unknown Batrishan represents the old Batrishans..."

 _Fidget_ , Rosetta realized mentally while the masked girl continued to talk.

"The only Batrishan you haven't met is the one who represents the ancient Batrishans: Bartok Ashiva Rex."

"The ex-prince? Why would the Evil One be interested in him?"

"Because together, they are the past, present, and future of what remains of the Batrishan civilization. However, there is only _one_ of those three specific Batrishans that he's interested in. Only one of them can give him the information he needs to find the child that was confiscated from him. Only his child can give him the old, lost power he craves for when the annular eclipse falls upon Storybrooke..."

" _Storybrooke?_ " Rosetta was horrified by what the masked girl had just said. "The Evil One wants to pursue his...scheme... _on Storybrooke?_ "

The masked girl nodded. "With all the curses, spells, and events that happened before and after your town came to be, Storybrooke is the one place in all the magical realms where magic breathes the strongest. A perfect place for the Evil One's devious scheme. That is why he wants you to bring the squire and Bartok back to Storybrooke with you once you find the shrine of Canterbury."

Rosetta got angry. " _Excuse me_? What the Hell makes you think that I would drag two Batrishans against their will to Storybrooke just because your boss wants me to?"

"He's promised to help dispose of Darwin and his goons in exchange for you to bring the two Batrishans to Storybrooke."

"You think I'm crazy enough to pay that price? Think again!"

The masked girl sighed. "I feared you'd say that. But once you see this, you will understand why the three Batrishans must me together in Storybrooke." She lifted the mask off her face, revealing it to Rosetta, who gasped at the face she saw.

"Are you convinced now?" the masked girl asked as she covered her face again with her mask.

"Unfortunately, I am."

 _Much later_

The fighting kept going on outside until a horrible scream came from the palace.

"Please don't tell me that it came from Rosetta!" Dwight said anxiously.

"Look!" Isaac pointed at an opening on the West side of the palace: a figure was seen falling down from it, followed by what sounded like a body hitting rocks. Eventually, Darwin's goons started screaming as their bodies broke apart and began to shrivel into a thousand bugs that spread off into the ruined city.

"That was disgusting," Anaïs shuddered while Tristan flew towards the palace and came back with Rosetta in his arms. Eglantine instantly rushed towards Rosetta to make sure that the child was alright. From what Rosetta had said, Darwin had tried to attack her while he had her cornered in a temple room within the palace. Unfortunately, Darwin had miscalculated his attacks and inadvertently fell to his own doom.

"Not to mention that I had this weird vision in the temple room," Rosetta added. "For some reason, I saw an albino Batrishan in my mind..."

"Bartok Ashiva Rex," Tristan immediately said.

"How can you be sure, Tristan?" Dwight frowned. "I've seen a few of your kind back in Camberley and all of them have different color tones that could replace those of a rainbow. What makes you think that the albino bat from Rosetta's vision was the former prince of your people?"  
"Because the only Batrishans to be albino were those of the ancient royal family. Bartok is the only remaining member of the family as we know."

"Maybe this small misadventure in the Batrishan Sanctuary was actually a twist of fate," Aaron suggested. "If Darwin hadn't kidnapped us, then Rosie here would have never received the vision." He slightly patted her on the shoulder. "Do you have any idea of where he might be?"

"I didn't see anything in any of my visions," Rosetta said.

"I see. Tristan?"

"Well, the last we've heard of Bartok was that he resided in the Valley of A Thousand Whispers," Tristan said unhappily. "There are two problems, though: the valley is hidden in a mountain range in the South-Western Hemisphere, which could take us months just to get there. And second, no one has heard of Bartok in the last century or so. He might not be there anymore."

"Great! How the Hell are we supposed to find both one albino Batrishan and the shrine?" Isaac muttered.

Maurice pulled out his map and began to have a look at it. "There might be a solution to our problem." He showed the map to the rest of his comrades. "If we go back to our original direction by taking the holy river, we should arrive in a couple of days at a location that is said to have mystical powers."

"What kind of mystical powers?" Eglantine slightly shuddered. "You know how I feel about the unholy."

"I know," Maurice assured her. "The only things that are known about the mystical powers are that they are hidden in a canopy of twisted trees and that only one with advanced foresight may reach the top."

Every single pilgrim looked at Rosetta.

"Why me?" she sighed.


	20. To Fight An Obsessed Alicorn

Race Through Time:

To Fight An Obsessed Alicorn

"According to Belle, the next ingredient that Midnight Sparkle is going to need to make her Lustful Curse is a handful of coriander," Emma said.

She and Killian were sitting in Emma's car parked not too far from the park. While Marion and Anubis' jackals continued to scout the woods in order to find the alicorn, the rest of the heroes were trying to locate the remaining ingredients in the hopes of getting a step ahead of the crazy alicorn.

"I am no expert on botany," Killian shrugged. "What the bloody hell is coriander?"

Before Emma could reply, a voice nearly startled them. "It's cilantro." Emma looked through the open window of her car and saw Henry, looking smugly at her. His girlfriend Violet stood next to him.

"Hey kid, what are you doing here?" Emma asked.

"Out on a romantic walk," Henry shrugged. Killian gave an amused grin as the boy asked his mother: "What's this story about Lustful Curse?"

"Lustful Curse?" Violet gasped. "Oh dear..."

"You've heard about it?" Emma asked the girl.

"From a true story that occurred long before Camelot came." Violet nodded. "It involved the late King Uther Pendragon..."

"Arthur's father?" Emma frowned, remembering the crazy king.

"Yes. Before Arthur was born, Uther's kingdom and the one of another king, Gorlois, were at war. During that time, Uther grew obsessive towards the wife of Gorlois, Igraine, to the point where he used a witch's potion to temporarily turn himself into Gorlois and approach Igraine in her bedchambers while the real Gorlois was out."

"Oh, I heard that story!" Henry snapped his fingers. "Then Gorlois died shortly and Igraine ended up marrying Uther in order to end the war and their union created Arthur."

"Yes," Violet hesitated. "Only...Uther wasn't exactly satisfied. Despite her marriage to Uther, Igraine still loved Gorlois and mourned his death. Uther got hit by jealousy and got his hands on the Lustful Curse formula, which he used on Igraine to make her lust on the king."

"And how did it end for the two of them?"

"That's when it got worse: from devoting so much of her soul and lust to Uther because of the Lustful Curse, Igraine eventually forgot what it's like to live and eventually found herself 'draining to death', as they called it back in Camelot. And Uther...he drowned himself in a lake miles away from Camelot. Ever since his death, corianders have been growing around the lake like mushrooms as a symbol of lust."

Emma and Killian stared at one another in horror after Violet finished the story. If it turned out, Midnight Sparkle's scheme to get Fidget's heart was deeper than just getting his devotion.

"Mom, what's going on?" Henry asked.

Emma told Henry the whole story about what was going on from Midnight Sparkle escaping Pandora's Box and her hunt to get revenge on Fidget to Rosetta's sudden disappearance and location in the Enchanted Forest.

"Good thing I grew up in Storybrooke," Henry commented. "There are only two places in town where Midnight could get her hands on cilantro: the farmer's market or the Games of Thorns shop."

"A market and Belle's father's flower shop? Thanks Henry!" Emma said as she and Killian fastened their seatbelts.

"No problem! And I'll do some personal research to see if I can understand why Rosetta went missing," Henry said.

"You think you can do that?" Violet asked.

"Hey, I'm the Author." Henry shrugged. Violet smiled at her boyfriend.

"Thanks kids," Emma said. "Meet up at the library at seven to see if you found anything?"

"Of course."

They then went on their separate ways.

 _Minutes later_

"Mr. French?" Emma called once she and Killian stepped inside the flower shop. After leaving Henry and Violet, Emma had called David and Gold to let them know the second possible targeted location of corianders while she and Killian went to the Games of Thorns shop. A strong scent of roses and lilies filled the air as she and Killian headed towards the counter, where Moe French, Belle's father, was busy cutting the stems of hydrangeas.

"Sheriff Swan? How may I help you?" Moe French asked.

"Mr. French, I'll just make it quick: you might be targeted by someone trying to create a Lustful Curse and needing to get corianders from you..." Emma began.

"Too late darling," Moe's voice suddenly changed into a feminine voice.

"Midnight Sparkle," Killian snarled.

Moe French sneered before he was engulfed in smoke composed of eight-pointed stars and purple cosmos until it dissolved away, revealing Moe to be indeed the crazy alicorn. The last time they saw her, she was wearing a jumpsuit and leather jacket, but today Midnight was wearing a purple and black version of Emma's usual clothing attire, with the blonde's red jacket meeting it's evil clone, a dark violet jacket with an eight-pointed star shaped badge attached on it.

"What the Hell?" Emma asked, practically insulted.

"How do you like my look?" Midnight taunted. "I must admit, I rather like the fashion trends of this world..."

"What have you done to Belle's father?" Killian demanded.

"He's hog-tied and kept in the shop's basement," Midnight said smugly. "At least it gave me plenty of time to get these." She waved something in her hand in front of the two, and much to their horror, it was a handful of cilantro. Emma tried to blast them with magic, but the alicorn was quick and kicked Emma hard in the stomach. The Savior crashed into a bucket of chrysanthemums.

"SWAN!" Killian cried.

"Go save Moe!" Emma told Killian. The pirate nodded and rushed to the back of the store. Midnight grimaced at the entire scenario.

"You are lucky to have a faithful lover, Savior," she said, her voice giving out a tone of jealousy. "But I don't have to worry. Soon I'll have the next ingredients, the Lustful Curse will be complete, and by the time the next full moon's shattered reflection looms upon the altar, Fitzgerald will be mine!"

Emma frowned at what the alicorn was saying. "Look, I know you think you can possess Fidget, but using the Lustful Curse on him will be fatal for the two of you..."

"Please, you think I'm unaware of the fact that he drank the Elixir of Nine Lives?" Midnight rolled her eyes. "Suicide is the only way for him to obtain death, and honestly, aside from wanting to possess his heart, I also want to get my revenge on him making a fool out of me. Rebuffing my first advances then acting like he felt the same way, seduce me into intimacy, and before even getting deflowered...SUCKED INTO THE BOX! Do you have _any_ idea of what it's like to land in a hellish wasteland within a box, stark naked and easily preyed by the local vermin? The humiliation!"

"What Fidget did was wrong, but getting back at him won't help. Trust me, I..." Before Emma could finish, Midnight made a hand motion that caused the tile floor to fall apart and the tiles to assemble around and above Emma until it seemed like she was encased in a stone box. Emma tried to break free with both her strength and her magic, but the walls were shutting down on her the same way walls were moving in movies like 'Indiana Jones'.

"Admit defeat, Savior," Midnight snickered as the box kept closing in on Emma. "Your magic may be powerful, but it is younger than mine. No magic can defeat one that is older!" To that she sprout her wings open and flew straight out the window, crashing through the glass and flew out in the open. Emma struggled to maintain her magic in one place of her brain as the walls were closing in until a bright light came out of the Savior and exploded like a giant light show, breaking apart the box and sending the tiles crashing all over the store. By the time Moe and Killian came into the scene, the store looked like it went through a volcano and Emma like she had wrestled a shark.

"Swan, are you alright?" Hook rushed to his girlfriend's side and helped her get up.

"What did the alicorn do to my shop?" Moe asked.

"Midnight escaped..." Emma gasped for air, "...and she took the corianders. And she still wants to get revenge on Fidget. She also said how Fidget would be hers by the time the... 'next full moon's shattered reflection looms upon the altar'? What does that mean?"

"It means that the next there's a full moon, she's going to go to an altar where she'll get a reflection of the moon through the wood's branches, which will make the moon's reflection look 'shattered'," Moe said. "I've heard that phrase from an old gypsy tale."

"And if I'm correct based on my astronomy knowledge," Killian said, "the next full moon will be around the beginning of May, which unfortunately is the deadline for putting that crazy alicorn back in the blasted box. We don't have much time."

 _At the Storybrooke Public Library_

"Have you found anything, Henry?" Violet asked. She and Henry had been spending nearly two hours with their noses in nearly every book they could find excluding Henry's treasured storybook, and so far nothing.

"Nothing!" Henry grumbled as he slammed his storybook closed and dropped his head on the table he was sitting at. Violet was on the verge of walking towards her boyfriend and comfort him until a book on a nearby shelf caught her interest. She pulled it out and read the title.

" _The Canterbury Tales_? This world has a book about Dwight's travels? But he never got to the shrine yet!"

"What are you talking about?" Henry joined his girlfriend, who was flipping through the book's pages.

"Henry, this book talks about pilgrims going to the Canterbury Shrine and ends with an unresolved story. But this isn't the true story! I knew one of the pilgrims, the Tapiser. His name was Dwight and he lived in Camberley, a kingdom almost like Camelot. When I was close to seven, my father took me to Camberley to witness the jousting tournament between Camberley and Camelot. I remember meeting Dwight. He was selling tapestries at a stand during the tournament. When my father briefly chatted with him, I overheard Dwight saying that he was saving money for an upcoming pilgrimage..."

"A pilgrimage? To the shrine of Canterbury?" Henry got curious, for the Canterbury Tales were part of the tales he wasn't very familiar with...

A bell rung in his head. After the events involving the San Angel Heroes and the Aztec Gods, Rosetta had told Henry of the numerous recorded stories she had read in the Book Of Life and that she would take the opportunity to read some of the stories she wasn't very familiar with during her spare time. _The Canterbury Tales_ were among them.

Henry might not known Rosetta's current location in the Enchanted Forest, but he had an idea of with whom she might be right now.


	21. Visionary Sister Trust and Prophecy

Race Through Time:

Visionary Sister Trust and Prophecy

Maurice wasn't kidding when he said that it would take a couple days for the pilgrims to reach the place holding 'mystical powers' that would guide them to Bartok.

After two days of sailing down the holy river, Rosetta was getting even more seasick. Once again, her vomit had been used for skin lotion.

Tristan hadn't spoken to Rosetta ever since the encounter with Darwin at the ruins of the Batrishan Sanctuary, but on the second day, after seeing how the child was forcing herself away from the other pilgrims except from Harry, who brought her his fried fish that she enjoyed, Eglantine, who'd help her clean her laundry, and Tristan, who came to collect her vomit, Tristan decided to go sit with her at the front of the boat.

"How's everything going, Rosie?" he asked as he sat down in front of her. The demigoddess was bundled up in a blanket and looked up at the Batrishan. She was in a horrible state: her dark Egyptian skin seemed to be getting pale, her hair was messed up as if its owner had trouble sleeping, and her eyes...Good lord, her eyes were getting tired black marks underneath them and their glare was the one of somebody who didn't sleep and was severely traumatized.

Tristan instantly regretted asking Rosetta how she was doing, because now he saw exactly how he imagined young Batrishans when fleeing the Evil One's wrath during the Batrishan Genocide: a child getting her innocence crushed and her mind traumatized by the real horrors of life.

"I...I miss my parents!" Rosetta broke into tears. "I miss Fidget, I miss Storybrooke...I WANT TO GO HOME!"

"Hush now." Tristan moved towards her so that he could sit by her side and pull her into a comforting hug. Shining tears fell into his shirt from the girl who was crying her face into it, but Tristan didn't mind. "You'll find your family. I promise."

"And what if I can't?" Rosetta whimpered. "What if I'm stuck here forever?"

"Rosetta..."

"I never should have read the book. If I hadn't, I would have never have come here!"

"And if you never came here, you would have never brought hope."

Rosetta wiped her nose and looked at Tristan. "What?"

"Rosie, you have no idea of how many years I spent trying to find an answer for the race through time and my people's revenge prophecy. Until you showed up, I barely found anything. You have no idea of how much help you are to me."

Rosie smiled a bit before making it fade away and turn her face from Tristan in a sad way. Whether it was Tristan's imagination or not, it seemed like something was bothering her.

The boat stopped abruptly, shaking its passengers a bit. They had reached the location of the 'mystical power' that would help them locate Bartok, and then they could back to their quest for the shrine of Canterbury.

"Moe, are you sure this is the place?" Isaac asked rather nervously while Dwight tied the boat to a giant tree in order to keep it on port. "Because it looks as creepy as the Batrishan Sanctuary."

Most of the pilgrims had to agree that after the Batrishan Sanctuary and where goblins had attacked them, this was the third scariest thing they had seen in the holy river. Every inch of solid ground appeared to be occupied by large, jungle like trees that went all the way up a foggy sky with their twisted branches and thick canopies like the snake hair of a Gorgon.

"It is." Maurice nodded. He pointed up high in the creepy canopy. "The mystical power is said to lurk somewhere in the trees. Only Rosetta, due to her advanced foresight powers, can find her way through this branch maze and reach her visionary sister power..."

"Visionary sister?" Rosetta asked.

"Legends say that people with advanced foresight powers are bonded by a deep connection of power," Maurice told her. "If you can use that mystical link, then you can make your way through the maze and reach the mystical power, where you'll find the answer to our problem."

"Easy-peasy." Isaac shrugged with consent.

"Yeah..." Rosetta gulped as she stared upwards. "Easy-peasy." She began to make her way towards the boat's edge and stared at the water, which had lost its original brown color to a tar black one. This only reminded her of the vision she had of Fidget trapping Belle and Emma in an hourglass full of tar during his first scheme against Hook. Rosetta still had nightmares just from doodling that scenario in her sketchbook and even writing about it for her 'recorder's job' to the gods.

Eglantine and Tristan were the first to notice Rosetta's uneasiness.

"Maurice, is it necessary?" Eglantine asked the clerk. "She's just a child."

 _Just a child._

A small splash was heard. The pilgrims were freaked out when they saw Rosetta missing from her position on the boat but sighed in relief that they saw her moving her way through the water.

"You alright, lassie?" Anaïs called out. Rosetta kept walking as the waters eventually became shallow and into small waves moving slowly on the puny excuse of a beach. She then made her way to a nearby tree and began climbing her way up into the fog.

"I don't know if it's because you called her a child, Eglantine," Harry said, "but that kid just got active."

 _Minutes later_

 _Just a child._

Rosetta had felt a big pang going through the neurons of her brain when she heard the prioress Eglantine calling her a child. Sure, the prioress said it out of concern for Rosetta, but if there's one thing that Rosetta learned to dislike since she was small and to loathe completely ever since she got dragged into an undesired pilgrimage, it was to be called out as the helpless little demigoddess that needed protection from her papa wolf Anubis.

When her berserk button got pushed, she then felt something dragging her spiritually out of the boat, through the waters, and up into the canopy's labyrinth of branches. It was calling to her, pulling her to the top like a puppet master pulling the strings of a marionette.

The fact that she felt being pulled made Rosetta think of Marco, aka Gepetto, back in Storybrooke. Who knows what the heck he was building right now? A few days ago, she was helping a humanoid spider turn wagons into a boat able to carry eight humanoid animal pilgrims, one human child, and a herd of sheep.

Rosetta stopped to catch a bit of air once she arrived at the most crowded part of the canopy. Good thing that, with the large size of the branch she was standing on, she had no chances of falling. The only thing that could make her fall would be the constant banging in her head worthy enough to give her a knock out headache.

She almost began to sit down on the thick branch until a strange noise hit her ears. It was a distant, but audible sound, a...rather pleasant noise. It sounded like a combination of chiming, glass clanging, and hissing. All mashed up into one harmonious tune.

 _Follow that sound_ , the banging told Rosetta.

"OK," she said out loud to no one in particular.

 _Eventually_

After pushing her way through walls of branches getting more attached to one another, Rosetta reached the end of the branch, which had now begun to take the shape of a cripple stairwell going straight towards some sort of giant cocoon made of branches. The strange sound was getting louder as Rosetta walked down the branch and found herself in front of the giant branch cocoon.

Rosetta didn't see any entrance around the cocoon. She began to think of how she could get in until she got a vision of Regina, back in her old days as the Evil Queen, walking through a looking glass with the Mad Hatter. Hit by the unwanted inspiration, Rosetta put her arms out and, as predicted, walked her way through the branch-thick shell of the cocoon, which felt rather weird as it passed her skin. It reminded Rosetta of the time when she was little and one of her father's servants had the weird idea to use litchi nuts to make cream for tending Rosetta's bruise after the latter accidently tripped in the staircase.

"One of these days I'm going to wish for brain surgery," Rosetta muttered to herself.

"You shouldn't say things like that, little sister." The mysterious voice made Rosetta jump, giving her the chance to look at the interior of the cocoon.

It was rather stunning. The only thing to decorate and give light to the room were several trinkets hanging from the dark ceiling: wind chimes, tavern bottles, stained glass shards, pierced coins, old rejected jewelry, vials containing hair locks, eyeballs, or body organs, and candles. A majority of the hanging bazaar explained the stuff that Rosetta had heard on the way here.

"Anybody home?" Rosetta asked out loud.

"Look ahead," the mysterious voice said.

Rosetta did so. Up ahead of her stood a woman sitting in a lotus position, meditating on an Indian pillow and meditation mat. The demigoddess took the courage to walk a few extra steps towards the meditating woman, but stopped when she got a better view of the pillow.

It wasn't a pillow.

It was an Indian rock python, coiled up in a position that allowed it to both relax and grant a comfortable position for the meditating woman, who was covered by several tattered Indian or Persian silks that managed to form a traditional Indian dress. A few strands of black hair came out of the purple turban, crowned with a snake-eye gem, that she wore on her head. Her lips were black and her eyes were shut.

"Is every person with advanced foresight not white?" Rosetta asked bluntly. She could imagine her parents scolding her for such a racist comment.

Then came the creepy part: while the woman shrugged and spoke calmly, without even opening her eyes, the python opened its own, revealing gray _human_ eyes.

"OK, this is something I don't see everyday." Rosetta winced.

"I don't blame you," the woman said quietly. "Ah's quite of a silent brooder."

"You're snake's name is _Ah?_ "

"No, sister. _Ah_ is a part of me. We share the same soul, but before we got split into two different bodies, we were commonly known as _Kaa_."

Rosetta stiffened. "K...Kaa?"

This was one of those rare examples of why Rosetta hated the turns-out-that-storybook-tales-characters-are-real reality. Her mother used the Disney movie of _The Jungle Book_ as a way of telling Rosetta that if she went out alone, Kaa the man-eating snake would lurk from underneath the shadows and swallow her whole as punishment for disobeying her parents' orders of Rosetta to be accompanied. This caused Rosetta to have visions of all the villainous adaptations of the python, the scariest one being the female version from this year's version of the Disney movie. Just hearing that female, seductive hypnotist serpent entrancing Mowgli into her coils and nearly eating him gave Rosetta nightmares.

"Trust in us, we weren't like that," the meditating woman said as if reading Rosetta's mind. Her words stunned the little girl a lot.

"How did you know what I was thinking?" Rosetta asked.

"Ah and I are part of the same being, Kaa," the woman said. How she managed to keep talking and remain in her lotus position while sitting on her snake was a complete mystery. "Kaa was just as described by Kipling: an old being, powerful and feared, but wise and loyal. A mentor to his friends and allies and a respected teacher."

" _But that changed_." Rosetta yelped and fell on her butt when she saw and heard Ah the python speak with his own mouth. It was rather creepy: while his female human half spoke in a normal voice and kept her eyes shut, Ah had human eyes and had the hissing voice of a snake. " _Over the years, many individuals have ceased to view snakes as protectors, voices of advice, mentors, or even healers. They began to see us as death for our venom, as sirens for our smooth words, and treacherous for hardly possessing any limbs_."

"So a wizard, out of the pressure of a human village, had the personalities of Kaa split into two," the woman said.

"The human side and the snake side?"

"Mostly the wise, humane, and loyal being and the fork-tongued, predator, and so-called 'ruthless predator' one."

"That's just dumb." Rosetta rolled her eyes. "Human doesn't mean good incarnate. Well, not always."

" _Kaa said the same thing before he got split into us_ ," Ah snorted. " _But no one wanted to believe a snake anymore, so once Hak and I got split, they immediately asked her for the truth, and when Kaa's exact words got out of her lips, we got sealed in this tree...forever._ "

"An unfair, but predictable punishment," Hak said. "The world locked us away from it, leaving us to rely on Kaa's remaining followers, who were kind enough to provide us nourishment and small gifts to...liven up our little home."

" _We do get some travelers who visit us, mostly to ask for council, but a majority become my dinner thanks to their pathetic ingratitude._ "

Rosetta gulped at the part of Ah saying he ate ungrateful travelers.

" _Relax, I'm not going to eat you_ ," Ah reassured Rosetta. " _Besides, one of my grass-snake cousins told me that you helped him out back in your town, this...Storybrooke._ "

"Grass-snake?"

Then it her like a pile of bricks. "Oh, Steve!"

"Steve?" Hak frowned at Ah.

" _The grass-snake who came by last week? He said a daughter of Anubis helped him with a ghastly tummy ache. Once she let him go through the town line and into the Land Without Magic, he slithered his way to New York, but got sick of the constant cars and zero respect for little guys like him, so he took the well portal back to the Enchanted Forest_."

"And how's Steve doing?" Rosetta asked.

" _Hate to say this, but he had a bad encounter with a local crocodile._ "

"Oh." Rosetta frowned, feeling sad for the sudden news of her old acquaintance's death. "I hope Apep sent him to a good afterlife."

" _Same here, but enough about the past."_

"You came for something, didn't you, little sister?" Hak asked.

"Why do you keep calling me 'little sister'?" Rosetta asked. "We're not related."

"Gifted individuals blessed and cursed with advanced foresight are spiritually connected. We are like the eyes of Argos: we see things differently, but we are connected to the same mind of the same beast."

"My visionary sister," Rosetta recalled the words that Maurice had told her back on the boat.

"Precisely."

"So...by being visionary sisters, I can trust in you?"

"It's not a question of if you can trust in me." Hak opened her eyes, which turned out to be pitch-black snake eyes. "It's a question of whether or not we can trust one another."

 _Later_

They ended up trusting in one another and the three had moved from the meditating area to the center of the core, where they sat and sort of ate. And by eating, I mean that Ah swallowed a live iguana while Hak and Rosetta made cheers with bowls full of cow bone broth.

"So, you wish to seek the former prince of the Batrishan," Hak said while Rosetta struggled to finish her broth, which tasted more like blood than broth. "You don't have to finish it if you don't like it, little sister."

"I apologize for my unintentional rudeness...big sister," Rosetta said as she put her bowl down. "But yes, I...Well, the pilgrims and I need to find him."

" _Don't you mean_ _ **you**_ _need to find him_?" Ah asked, using his tail to point at Rosetta. " _Snakes may be untrustworthy in mankind's miniature sense of logic, but we can tell through ground vibrations and emitted waves of heart beats when a human lies._ "

"What Ah is saying is that the pilgrims themselves don't want anything in particular from Bartok, little sister. They only decided to go look for him because you claimed you had a vision of him. But Ah and I are like you. As we are the split halves of Kaa, we know you lied to them."

Hak and Ah knew the truth, so Rosetta took a deep breath and told them everything that occurred to her in the Batrishan Palace, especially during her encounter with the Masked Girl. The woman and the snake didn't interrupt the child even once; they just made head gestures that indicated they were listening and wanted her to continue.

"So now I don't know what to do," Rosetta sighed as she finished her story. "I don't want to drag Tristan and Bartok out of their own will to Storybrooke just because the Evil One gave me no choice and I don't want them to meet Fidget. I mean, I care for Fidget..."

"You see him as a big brother," Hak filled out for Rosetta. "Out of all the individuals you encountered, from your birth to Storybrooke, he is the only one who doesn't treat you like the weak daughter of Anubis every adult thinks you are."

"No."

" _Minus the time he held you captive, you are the only one among the Storybrooke heroes and their allies that he doesn't want to harm._ " Ah slithered towards Rosetta and gently patted his head on her lap to comfort her. " _And that's something coming from him. Ever since he chose to accept eternal immortality from the Elixir of Nine Lives, he chose to avoid paying its price of making its drinker watch his or her loved ones dead. Bartok took the Elixir and he has suffered it for centuries. And Fidget...he believed to have lost everyone he loved after his foster family and betrothed were killed and Aldorada was exterminated by war. What better way could he think of avoiding a painful price as the one of the Elixir than to renounce loving anything?_ "

"Fidget might not be willing to give up the power he meant for revenge after so many years, but he can't bear to see you get hurt anymore," Hak agreed.

Rosetta nodded, recalling all her memories that came out as proof to Hak and Ah's words.

 _You know, you're kinda of a nice jerk_ , she had told Fidget when he had held her captive and he had briefly consoled her from her tears and misery by letting her cuddle in his lap and covered her with his wings to keep her warm. And he did all that in a sort of brotherly way.

 _I'm not_ , Fidget had told Rosetta. _Crying just annoys me, especially when I'm close to victory._

 _Whatever._

Rosetta then recalled the second scheme that Fidget did: tricking the Bog King into returning him his Dark Cursed wife, Queen Marianne, in exchange for killing Lily and Hook, and in order to deepen the fake Storybrooke identity he gave to Marianne, Fidget handed her to Bluebeard, the town's worst black market sex trader and the Enchanted Forest's most vile rapist. At first, Fidget was against his associate toying the amnesiac woman but chose to not blow off his scheme until Rosetta knocked some sense into him and he gave up.

 _I...hope this is the last time I let the codfish get away,_ he had cried.

Rosetta then hugged him. _You know, you might be a villain and a jerk, but you're not_ that _heartless._

Rosetta also recalled the showdown on Main Street on that same day, when Bluebeard threatened her life with a gun pressed on her skull. Fidget had actually looked terrified when he saw the blue-haired maniac threatening the child.

 _Let her go_ , Rosetta remembered the Batrishan saying.

During the time when the San Angel heroes were in Storybrooke, Rosetta and Fidget had been interacting casually in the woods as if it were the norm. He gave her a nice book. She kept her mouth shut about his scheme involving Xibalba's medal. He trusted her enough to hold a book as sacred as the Book of Life. Rosetta especially never forgot how Fidget calmed her down from letting her overwhelmed emotions make the Book explode and badmouthed her father Anubis from being overprotective towards Rosetta.

Plus, after he isolated himself in his cottage, Fidget didn't feel like seeing anybody else other than Rosetta for their usual Tea Thursdays.

She pushed her memories aside and went back to the conversation. "You're right about my personal views on Fidget," she told Hak and Ah, "but I'm also aware that he isn't exactly a...safe person."

"I'd personally go with the fact that he's dangerous to the core," Hak said. "But that's not the point, little sister. Unlike your friend the Batrishan squire, the Batrishan Prince of Darkness has already met Bartok."

"Wait, what?" Rosetta felt a wave of shock going through her spine. "But he said he never met anybody of his own kind!"

" _Did you even ask him to swear on the river Styx on that?_ " Ah asked skeptically. " _That Batrishan has never been the most trusted by others, especially the heroes of Storybrooke, because of his dark past that drove him towards a very official path of villainy that Ashiva laid out for him."_

"Why on Earth would Ashiva want one of his mortal people to become evil? Batrishans are supposed to be the most altruistic and benevolent of all kinds!" Rosetta protested.

"You'd be surprised, but with all the things he did in the past and all the powers he consumed just to get his revenge, he has become a very powerful source of darkness himself." Hak eyes suddenly began to glow and a golden mist shaped and glowing like a solar eclipse began to illuminate the core. Hak and Ah's mouths stayed wide open like a snake on the verge of swallowing its prey. At first, Rosetta feared that they were going to kill her, but then she gasped when she saw red smoke coming out of their mouths and slithering towards the eclipse projection. Golden lights clashed with red ones until a giant, fiery-colored smoke Indian rock Python appeared, rising on its coiled body like a sage and tilting its head down at Rosetta like the cobra on the pharaoh's crown.

"Kaa," she realized.

Kaa's smoke apparition nodded. It opened its mouth and words echoed through the core much louder than the bells of Notre-Dame:

 _The race through time you must take_

 _To when the fate of balance must have begun!_

 _The race through fate will be at stake_

 _And soon shall rise the Evil One._

Rosetta felt like she had been slapped: the words she had read that dragged her to the Enchanted Forest...

THEY WERE PART OF A PROPHECY!

 _After three centuries, the sun will darken again._

 _From the underground the maze shall rise._

 _Through crystals shall be heard the goddess and Batrishans scream in pain._

 _From his crown, the Prince of Darkness' evil will terrorize._

 _The cursed dagger will bond with the dragon,_

 _Who seeks her enslaver's demise and the loyalty of her heir._

 _The worlds' town will face the agony_

 _As darkness, evil, and malevolence rule the air._

Kaa's apparition, along with the smoke, dissolved into nothing, causing Hak and Ah to nearly lose consciousness and fall of their seated positions until they got back to their senses. Rosetta rushed to ensure their wellbeing.

"Hak..." Rosetta began.

"South Porthaven," Hak said as she rubbed her head. "Right where the holy river touches the open seas. It takes about a week to get there by boat. You'll find Bartok there."

"But..."

" _It's on the same way as the Shrine of Canterbury, which is located at an island not too distant from South Porthaven._ " Ah started pushing Rosetta away from Hak and towards the core. " _You have to go! Otherwise the Masked Girl will warn her master!_ "

"What will the Evil One do to you?"

" _If he finds out that you're still snooping in his business? I fear the worst! JUST GO! AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU!_ "

Rosetta wanted to reply, but she only nodded and ran up the path she took out of the core once Ah fully pushed her out. She didn't look back. By the time she reached the tree she used to climb up towards the canopy, a distant sound of fire burning was heard.

"Rosie, you're back!" Eglantine was the first to spot the human girl making her way down the tree. Anaïs, who had been collecting mushrooms, instantly grabbed the girl and gave her a piggyback ride while making their way back to the boat.

"We have to go to Porthaven!" Rosetta said as soon as her foot was on the deck.


	22. Lucretia's Bed Sheet

Race Through Time:

Lucretia's Bed Sheet

"Rosetta's with _who_?" Marion asked once they gathered in Mr. Gold's office. Emma was cuddling baby Amanda in her arms while Belle searched through her books and Henry explained to the adults what he managed to discover at the library with Violet.

"The Canterbury Pilgrims," Henry said. "I mean, I don't know much about them..."

"But which pilgrims are they specifically?" Hook interrupted. "I've heard for many years from other pirates and tavern patrons that going on a pilgrimage towards the shrine that will solve any of their problems would be the greatest treasure in their lives. Probably ten out of a million individuals back in the Enchanted Forest are trying right now to do such a pilgrimage!"

"Well Violet mentioned that her dad knew a tapiser named Dwight back in Camberley who dreamt of finding the shrine."

"That narrows things," Gold said. "I've heard about a troupe of eight unique pilgrims who left for Canterbury and were lucky to be stranded in the East when Regina casted her curse, thus sparing them."

"And the last we heard, Rosetta was transported to the Eastern Highlands!" Marion grabbed her husband's hands. "Anubis, she might be with them! Rosie might..."

"Have moved with them towards the shrine in the hopes that the shrine will grant her desire to come back home," Anubis said hopelessly. "What are the odds that she'd stay in one place to wait for us to get her? We can't even ground her to keep her still in her room for even an hour!"

They all stayed quiet, knowing that Anubis was right about his daughter's restlessness.

"I found more information about the Lustful Curse." Belle pulled her nose up from her book. "For instance, once a person has gathered all four ingredients into a lotion and tied his lusted target onto an altar in the middle of the woods during a full moon, the person must apply the lotion on his lips and force a kiss onto those of the victim in order to make the curse irreversible."

"Well that's never going to happen," Killian said flatly. "I highly doubt that Fitzgerald would let himself be caught off guard by that blasted alicorn again."

"Not to mention we saw a force field around his cottage after Mary Margaret and I tried passing by," David said. "Clearly he doesn't want any visitors lately."

"Kiss aside, I managed to find out what are the last two ingredients Midnight Sparkle needs to create the Lustful Curse: Lucretia's Bed Sheet and..."

"Lucretia's Bed Sheet?" Marion frowned at Anubis. "Isn't that the Roman woman who was famous for the rape that led to the Romans rebelling against the rapist monarch and creating the Roman Republic?"

"Ugh, don't remind me," Anubis groaned. "The Greco-Roman gods were bickering nonstop about who was to blame from Cupid and his arrows to Zeus and his jealousy of not getting the girl. The arguments were loud enough to be heard all the way across the Mediterranean Sea and past the Nile to the point where none of the Egyptian gods could sleep. And earmuffs didn't exist back then."

"That must have hurt," Henry said.

"Gee, you don't say." Anubis rubbed his ears. "I still have to clean my ears ten times a day just to soften my eardrums from the noise." He changed the topic. "Anyway, Lucretia's Bed Sheet is sacred because it was on that bed sheet that Lucretia got violated by Prince Tarquin and stabbed herself on the next day. You can imagine how half of the universal immortals reacted when the rebels raised the bed sheet above the usurped palace like a stained white flag and shouted that this is what happens when you let a tyrant and dictator rule you. Soon, he starts ruining your wives, daughters, and sisters.

"Lucretia's Bed Sheet became such a symbol of the consequences of lust that whoever was the idiot who made the Lustful Curse decided to cut off some of the fabric to use in the curse. So now, if anybody wants to use Lucretia's Bed Sheet for the deed, they'd just need like a handkerchief size of it."

"So what's left of it and where can we find it?" Emma asked. "If it's in Storybrooke, maybe we can find it and burn it before Midnight Sparkle gets her hands on it."

 _Meanwhile, at Archie's office_

Dr. Archie Hopper, aka Jiminy Cricket, was known for having many patients of all sorts to talk to, from dwarves like Leroy to even the ex-Dark One.

But honestly, the last thing he ever assumed was that the dark Batrishan who caused a lot of trouble lately in town would actually bother to come knocking at his door.

"I need someone to talk to," Fidget the Bat said. And what a state he was in! He had dark marks under his strange eyes, hinting that he had trouble sleeping. "Please?" he pleaded.

"I don't have any upcoming patients coming up right now. Do come in." Archie kindly let him in and watched as he easily walked and sat on the couch with his peg leg as if it were an actual limb and not a wooden crutch to walk on. The psychiatrist then proceeded to make some oolong tea and brought the tea set over to the table. "So, what's troubling you today?" he asked.

"Well for one it has nothing to do with my issues with the Charmings and the rest of the do-gooders," Fidget said in between tea sips. "It's...more personal. There's kind of...a girl."

"Rosetta Anubisia Romanov?" Archie had heard that his youngest patient was occasionally spending friendly times with the villain that was sitting on his couch at his moment.

"Heavens, no! I'm no pedophile!" Fidget exclaimed in shock. "No, it's about a much older girl who's looks like she's my age physically, but probably older than that since she said she does part-time teaching."

"I see." Archie put aside his teacup on the table and grabbed a notepad from which he began to take notes on. "And are you telling me that you're feeling some sort of attraction towards her?"

"That's the problem," Fidget confessed. "I don't know if I am."

Archie looked up from his notes and sat a little more upstraight. "Could you elaborate?"

"Well..." Fidget sighed and pondered. "How can I explain it? Should I go from the start?"

"That can help." Archie nodded. "Exploring past memories can help you understand what you're dealing with in the present."

"Alright. You probably heard the stories already, but I was born in almost three hundred years ago and raised by Aldoradian noblemen rather than my people. As a military leader and a close childhood friend of Queen Florencia, my father used to take me to the castle for parties in which I'd mostly spend time playing with the queen's children, Prince Pablo and Princess Isabella.

"I guess you can say that Isabella and I were secretly crushing on one another when we were kids. She even showed me her personal secret garden." Fidget chuckled at the memory. "We were still below ten when she told me about her fantasies of having a happily ever after...with me. They almost became real when I proposed to her when we were sixteen after I got her mother's blessing."

Archie nodded with a small understanding smile at the Batrishan while he continued to take notes and glance at his patient, who was starting to lose his happy face.

"But then there was an...incident involving an expedition for the collaboration of Aldorada and the kingdom in which the codfish, excuse me, _Killian Jones_ , served as Lieutenant. I'd rather not get into further details of the accident, but I can tell you that it cost the lives of my father and Isabella- she was acting as a royal diplomat during the trip- and for me to cripple my wing." Fidget looked at his right wing, which still looked in its usual half-flesh, half-mechanical brace appearance. "I ran away and woke up in the cottage of a sorcerer's apprentice who not only told me about my injury but told me about the Elixir of Nine Lives, which could grant me eternal immortality at the price of loved ones' lives. I assumed that I wouldn't have to pay the price since I lost everything from my family to my home, so I swore I would never fall for another weakness like love and I drank the Elixir." Fidget paused to look at a golden ring with an emerald he had on his index.

"So you're worried that if you are indeed attracted to this girl, the one here in Storybrooke, the Elixir's price will come back to haunt you and you might get her killed?" Archie asked.

"There's that." With his fingers, Fidget turned the emerald three times, revealing his ring to also be a locket. He brought his hand close to Archie for the psychiatrist to see the picture of a blonde young woman in her late teens with beautiful green eyes and lovely regal clothes meant for a princess from the Enchanted Forest.

"Was this your ex-fiancée?" Archie asked and saw the Batrishan nodding. "Isabella looked like she was a very charming lady."

"She was." Fidget pulled back and closed his ring's locket shut. "And for some reason, the girl I'm currently interested in looks exactly like her even after 283 years except for the dyed streak the one from here has. They also seem to share the same kind personality towards me. After Rosetta, the blonde one from here is the only one who has been really been genuinely nice to me ever since I came to Storybrooke.

"The Elixir of Nine Lives' price aside, I guess the other thing that's bothering me is if I would be dishonoring Isabella, the only other woman from Aldorada I loved more than anything else after my foster mother and my childhood nurse, by falling for a look alike." Fidget huffed and slouched on his seat. "This pretty much concludes my depressing history with love itself, and now there's a crazy villain out there who wants to use a Lustful Curse on me just because I tricked her with false emotions in order to trap her into Pandora's Box for a deal with the Dark One."

"I see." Archie stopped taking notes and clasped his hands together. "From what you have told me, I managed to conclude that the thing that is preventing you from making a choice is your fear of moving on. You look like you like the kind of person who spent and sacrificed so many years of his life just to get to an unachievable goal, and when you find out about it, you find it impossible to just put an end to the madness and find out what may lie out there, waiting for you to move on. And I think that perhaps the reason you are seeing this girl in Storybrooke with the same appearance and kindness of your lost love is perhaps because it's an old memory reminding you of how you were happy before you became what you are and maybe if you slow down, you can get another chance of happiness close to the one you were hoping for."

"So, you're saying that I should go to the girl from today and shoot for another chance at happiness even if it means searching for a way to get rid of my immortality so that I don't get her killed?" Fidget asked Archie. The psychiatrist patiently nodded, leading to a pause of five seconds until the Batrishan grinned. "You know what, you're probably right. Once I put my issue with the other villain, I'm going to go straight to her. But of course, with baby steps."

"Well, I'm glad that..."

A crash was heard coming from the front door downstairs. Archie and Fidget got up from their seats and glanced at one another.

"This can't be a friendly patient," Archie said nervously. Pongo, who had been napping all along under Archie's desk, got up and began barking at the sound of steps ominous beginning to walk slowly up the stairs. Out of instinct, Fidget waved his hand at the door of Archie's office, making the door close tight with its inner locks and protected by a force field. They waited patiently until they saw the doorknob turning and shaking violently as it would when somebody is trying to force his way into your house.

"Maybe it's that Leroy dwarf coming back from work at the mines?" Fidget suggested. A kicking noise coming from behind the door made it shake even harder than the doorknob. Pongo barked louder.

"Open up, you miserable bug!" a familiar voice shouted as the door continued to bang.

"That voice..." Fidget realized in a whisper. "It's Midnight Sparkle. But what is she doing here, attacking us at your office?"

"I don't know!" Archie said desperately. "I never met her in my life!"

"Ok, grab your dog right now! Just do it!"

Without protesting, Archie grabbed Pongo and got grabbed by the collar by the Batrishan. Fidget got on his feet, sprung his wings, and flew straight at the window, breaking the glass in the process. The force field he had put on the door disappeared as soon as he flew away from the building, leaving another poor door to suffer Midnight Sparkle's kick. She stepped into the office and growled as she saw that what she was looking for wasn't around.

 _Back at the pawnshop_

"Apparently Fidget was seen flying above town..." Emma said after answering an emergency report on her phone. Her sentence was unfinished because the back door leading directly towards Mr. Gold's office broke open and in came Fidget with Archie and Pongo.

"Archie, what happened?" David asked as he and Hook helped Archie get up and sit on a nearby chair while Fidget frantically locked the door and pushed nearby shelves to block the door.

"And just what do you think you are doing?" Belle asked the Batrishan as he snapped his fingers to summon a small field of bear and mice traps around the mountain of objects that were now blocking the back door.

"Midnight...attacked...Hopper's office," he panted once he was done and collapsed to the ground.

"But why would she attack Archie?" Killian asked as he knelt down next to Fidget.

"How should I know codfish?"

"And what were you doing with Archie in his office?" Emma asked suspiciously.

"Why, it's a crime for me to see a shrink when I need one, Swan? Do you ask your kid what he writes in his diary?" Fidget pointed at Henry to further his point.

"But why would Midnight Sparkle attack Archie's office?" David asked.

"Then again, she attacked my father in his flower shop," Belle commented as she gave Archie a glass of water and a bowl for Pongo. "It wouldn't surprise me."

"Wait, what was she doing at your father's shop?" Fidget frowned.

"She found one of the other ingredients she needed at Mr. French's flower shop," Killian explained. "Now she only needs two more."

"So that's why she attacked." Everyone looked at Anubis as he put his hands into Archie's pant pockets and pulled out from one of them a papyrus yellow colored handkerchief with sewn cricket designs on it. Ignoring Archie's protests and demands on getting his property back, Anubis took a deep sniff at the fabric. "The last remains of Lucretia's Bed Sheet. Dr. Hopper's handkerchief is made out of the last fabric scrap of the next ingredient Midnight Sparkle needs to create the Lustful Curse."  
"That can't be!" Archie protested. "Pinocchio made it for me as a present when I began to be his conscience back when he was still a puppet and me a cricket! This handkerchief means so much to me!"

"But if we don't get rid of it, Midnight will still use it for the curse and you'll still never see it again, Archie!" Emma protested.

The adults began arguing until they heard baby cries and saw that Amanda had woken up from her nap and was beginning to cry from all the shouts.

"I'm so sorry, dearie!" Mr. Gold apologized to his daughter as he picked her up in his arms and tried to cradle her back to sleep gently, but it didn't stop Amanda at all. Belle had him pass the baby over to her so that she could try to cradle Amanda back in peace...which did not work.

"Not getting used to baby handling as I see," David remarked.

"You have no idea," Mr. Gold said drily above the cries.

"Oh, for crying out loud..." Fidget muttered. He got up a walked towards Belle. The woman looked baffled as Fidget managed to carefully pull the crying baby out of her arms and gently cradle her in his own.

" _I need none more light than the sun's. I disdain every king's glittering gold. Not even the night's coolest breeze can replace thee, my little demigod so bold_."

None one expected Fidget to actually start singing to soothe the baby, who actually stopped crying and began to giggle happily at the sound of the Batrishan's surprisingly captivating voice.

" _There may be knights who need fair maidens fresher than thy spring's newborn lily pod. but nothing can replace thee, my beloved demigod._ "

Amanda's giggling began to turn into soft yawns. Fidget's golden medallion began to glow a bit as he finished his lullaby. " _I don't need Cupid to make me love thee, just as I disdain every king's glittering gold. There's no other treasure that can soothe me but thee, my little demigod so bold._ "

Finally, all they heard from the baby were small sounds of happy snoring.

"Wow, I didn't know you had it in you," David said quietly as Fidget gave Amanda back to Belle, who silently thanked him in order to avoid waking up Amanda again.

"I used to volunteer at orphanages back in Aldorada." Fidget shrugged. "For some reason, all the little ones ended up falling asleep every time I sang that lullaby my mother used to sing to me when I was little."

"Singing to sleep..." Marion pondered. "I think I may have an idea to delay Midnight from her quest."


	23. Meeting Bartok

Race Through Time:

Meeting Bartok

 _A week later_

South Porthaven was one of the well-managed port towns in the Eastern Hemisphere of the world where the Enchanted Forest is located. Since it was very close to the beautiful blue sea, fishermen would see the dazzling sun reflecting on the water, making each wave look like it was filled with glittery seashells and glowing fish. Each house was painted in some bright color like beige, white, or raspberry cream red. It was also one of those towns, much to the animalistic pilgrims' delight, where humans and creatures similar as the pilgrims to live together in good harmony.

The pilgrims and Rosetta found a good place in the port to dock their boat and made their way to town. Anaïs the Wife of Bath actually knew a childhood friend of hers who moved to South Porthaven after marrying her fourth husband, who currently held a very good inn called Duke's Ol' Inn not too far from the docks.

"So ya see, Sophie, that's why we need to find this Bartok fellow," Anaïs told her friend when they found her tending at the inn's bar. At Maurice and Rosetta's previous suggestion, Anaïs hid the truth about their entire voyage and claimed that they were looking for Bartok because Tristan was a distant cousin of his and they were supposed to meet up in town, only Bartok forgot to give the precise location.

"If you mean the albino look-alike of your good lookin' fellow here, I know just which Bartok you're all talking about." Sophie winked at the unimpressed Tristan as she served warm wine to the pilgrims and a glass of iced water at Rosetta. "He owns a farm with his wife and daughter a little bit uptown. Ben and I usually meet with them at the market when our apple cider and their garden produce need to be sold."

"How far is it from here?" Rosetta asked.

"I'd say about a twenty minute walk from here if you take the coastal streets, but if you have a boat, Ben could lead you through a shortcut that leads to the beach bordering their farm. It's not crab season yet, so take the opportunity to sail while the waters are clear."

They thanked her for the information and went back to the boat as soon as Ben agreed to lead them. As Sophie predicted, there was no traffic coming from any of the local boats today, so it made it easier for the pilgrims to navigate their boat near the town shores. Finally, after a good ten minutes or so, they reached a catwalk that led the docked boat to a rather nice neighborhood full of large green fields occupied with diverse crops, clean stone roads, and pleasant-looking cottage houses.

"My word, it reminds me of the English country cottages from my homeland," Maurice said. "How charming!"

"It kinda reminds me of the one Fidget lives in back at..." Rosetta's voice trailed off. Thinking again about her hometown just reminded her that she duped her friends into coming here because she had made a deal with the Evil One's 'henchgirl' to bring Tristan and Bartok back to Storybrooke with her.

"Bartok and his family live in the red cottage just down Sunflower Lane," Ben said as he pointed at the stone road leading from the catwalk to further away in the neighborhood. "We'll, I'll be making my way back to the inn. Do tell Bartok that I said hi."

So the pilgrims and Rosetta bid farewell to Ben before the latter made his way back to the town and the group went down Sunflower Lane, which lived to its name because the local residents liked to keep sunflowers blooming in the area, whether the flowers were potted or growing from somebody's garden. They passed farmers tending to their crops, women collecting water from a well, and children playing in the area.

"Wanna play with us?" one of the children they ran into, a small humanoid Labrador puppy, asked Rosetta when she and the pilgrims ran into him and his friends playing.

"Not right now, thank you," Rosetta declined as politely as she could.

"That's OK," the boy said cheerfully. "Maybe an other time." The humanoid puppy then went back to play with his human and animalistic friends while Rosetta clung onto Eglantine's cape as they went back to their route, making the girl remember when she and her parents first came to Storybrooke during the Second Curse and she had clung on to her mother's jacket when they thought it was time for her to go to school with other children.

"Is everything alright, Rosie?" Eglantine gave an almost motherly back rub to Rosetta. "You seemed rather uncomfortable around the children when they asked you to play with them."

"I'm not used to hanging around with children of my age back home because I'm...different." _Especially because of my advanced foreseeing powers_ , she thought.

"Children." Isaac shook his head. "They can be cruel."

"Yeah," Rosetta sighed.

"So you don't have a lot of friends of your age back home, huh?" Tristan assumed.

"Right. I mostly interacted with the adults, but they were either prejudiced towards me or as over-cautious as my parents or bad people who just used me to get to the good people." Rosetta bit her teeth. "Only Fidget treated me much better after he learned that using me was useless. We've been seeing each other quite a bit even though my parents were against it."

"Disrespecting one's parent is a sin, my child," Aaron warned.

"They tried to ground me in my room!" Rosetta protested.

"Gotta give her some credit there." Anaïs nodded her head in agreement with Rosetta's excuse. "It's unhealthy for a woman's skin to be cooped up in her room."

"Look! There's the cottage!" Harry pointed at the end of the road.

They gasped when they saw the charming two-story cottage made of raspberry cream red stones for walls and surprisingly dry straw used for the roof. A white painted traditional wooden fence surrounded the cottage and the land connected to it. The pilgrims rushed to have a closer look at the prosperous fields of lettuce, tomatoes, and other healthy vegetables growing in well-tended crop rows, the medium-sized garden with so many colorful flowers, a large oak tree with a swing attached to a branch, an outdoor patio complete with tables and chairs, and a dove-themed granite fountain where birds came and went, taking the opportunity to bathe in the water and sing melodious tunes as they did so.

" _That's_ the home of Bartok?" Tristan gasped in disbelief. "For an ancient prince who abdicated the crown and turned into a recluse, he sure knows how to finally settle in a peaceful, prosperous environment."

"Let's hope he's not as reclusive as rumors make it seem." Rosetta walked first into the lovely garden and towards the white door. She prepared to knock...

"May I help you?"

Rosetta didn't expect a woman to suddenly emerge from the poppy bush. She was somewhere around thirty, close to Emma Swan's age, and wore a light purple country peasant dress over a white blouse, black flats, and a neat straw hat. Her hair and eyes were almost as blue as the sun and her skin was unusually pale. She held a basket full of poppies, daisies, lilacs, and marigolds, and on her back was a set of two folded glittery wings, making it clear that she was a fairy.

"Good day, Madam," Maurice spoke first as he bowed his head to the woman. "We are travelers and we were hoping to have a word with a certain Bartok. Do you know if whether or not he is around?"

"My husband's currently in town getting supplies, but he'll be back in a couple minutes. Do come in," the woman said warmly. "I'm Periwinkle, his wife."

"You're a fairy," Rosetta gasped as she watched Periwinkle's wings glow under the sunshine as Periwinkle opened the door for them, leading them inside. "But how come you still have your wings? I thought fairies lost their wings if they, you know, retired."

"Quite a clever child, aren't you?" Periwinkle giggled and stroked Rosetta's cheek affectionately the way fairies usually acted so sweetly around fairies. "Unlike the fairies under the order of the Blue Fairy, I didn't die mortal and become a fairy because I was pure-hearted. I'm what you'd call a wild fairy."

"A fairy born from newborn infant laughter that's released into the wild and instantly becomes a fairy to the environment she lands in," Isaac said in amazement while he helped Dwight hang everyone's coats or capes into the guest closet due to the cool temperature within the cottage. "I've seen a few flying around in my hometown when I was still little. Windmill fairies, as we called them, because they liked to reside in the local windmill. Some folks say that's why the flour the miller sells has such a sweet flavor."

"How nice, I'm sure they are delightful. I'm a frost fairy since the baby laughter I came from was released into the cold December, but I can use my magic to keep myself protected from the warm weather, especially since I like living near the sea."

"And how did you run into Bartok, if I may ask?" Tristan asked as their host led them through a hallway with beige walls, white doors, furniture decorated with landscape paintings and potted flowers, and a clean carpeted floor. This obviously showed that the family living here made enough for a living to make the house so cozy.

"He moved into South Porthaven about twenty years ago," Periwinkle said. "Due to some...issues he had with his culture, he had made the first impression of a recluse." She turned to Tristan. "Judging by the fact that you are surprisingly both pureblooded Batrishans, you know what I mean?"

"Of course." Tristan nodded. "Please continue."

"Right. So Bartok didn't interact very much with the other residents. Those who did get to do so mostly said that he was tolerable but not much of a talker. Bartok didn't attend much of the social events in town nor did he even bother to respond to town girls trying to catch his eye.

"Then, eighteen years ago, I moved from another coastal town in the Enchanted Forest because the Dark Curse had killed all the fish living in the area, and when there are no more fish left in a coastal town, business goes down. I tried to find a place to live and work at in South Porthaven, but almost every employer I tried reaching only thought that I was a fairy who made wishes come true and their jobs easier, so I rejected their work offers. I was almost running out of hope until a street beggar told me to try Bartok's house, which I did. At first he wanted nothing to do with me and he just let me in because my begging in the rain was annoying him."

"Which leads to the usual two individuals warming up for one another and then they fall in love." Rosetta rolled her eyes. "Déjà vu with my parents."

They arrived in a big living room, where a large wooden dining table was being set by a teenage girl with blue hair and eyes like those of Periwinkle. The only thing that really struck the pilgrims, especially Tristan, and Rosetta about the girl was that she had ears and glittery fairy wings shaped like those you'd expect a bat to have. Or even...

"A Batrishan hybrid," Tristan realized. "I haven't run in any since I left Camberley for my pilgrimage!"

The girl looked up and saw Periwinkle with her guests. "I didn't know we were expecting guests for lunch, Mum," she said.

"Oh, we didn't come for..." Aaron began to reassure her until a large growling interrupted him. They all looked at Rosetta, who was holding her stomach as if to make it shut up. "Rosie, how much did you lose your stomach during the trip here?"

"I lost count," Rosetta admitted. "I hate boat rides."

"Goodness, you must be hungry!" Periwinkle's daughter said pitifully. She grabbed a bowl and spoon and opened the lid of a porcelain soupière, unleashing a pleasant scent of lentils, carrots, and chicken. The pilgrims inhaled the rich scent with satisfaction while Periwinkle's daughter carefully poured soup into the bowl, put the soupière back in place, and put the bowl in front of the chair closest to Rosetta. Rosetta bit her lip. Part of her wanted to finally eat a properly cooked meal, but another part of her didn't want to give her hosts the impression of a greedy girl demanding food as soon as she stepped inside someone's house.

"It's impolite to refuse hospitality." Eglantine gently pushed Rosetta towards the chair, making the girl sit shyly on the chair and take a slow spoon scoop from the orangey liquid in the bowl facing her. Soon enough, the spoon went in and out of her mouth, leaving Rosetta with a delighted face.

"It's so yummy!" she said.

"Thank you," Periwinkle's daughter said. "Most of the food we eat here comes from our crops."

"Natural crops or magically tended?" Dwight asked as he observed the farms' crops from the window.

"We try to do both," Periwinkle said with pride. She poured water from a pitcher into a glass and flicked her fingers, creating four ice cubs to pop and land in the glass that she then gave to Rosetta as the latter continued to enjoy the soup. "Hungry, weren't you?" She smiled as she petted the small girl on the head. "When was the last time you had a warm cooked meal?"

"Unfortunately a...careless incident caused Rosetta to be dragged away from her home and family," Aaron explained. "She comes from Storybrooke, the place in the Land Without Magic where all the victims of the Dark Curses have been sent. We ran into her in the Eastern Highlands during our pilgrimage to the shrine of Canterbury and we took her with us to see if the shrine's power would send her back home. But then for some reason, her foreseeing powers inherited form her divine parentage gave her a fogged vision about your husband being able to help her out."

"I see." Periwinkle nodded in understanding.

"You do know that the Canterbury Shrine isn't a shrine, right?" her daughter asked.

"I beg your pardon?" Maurice blinked.

"The stories about the Canterbury Shrine being a shrine that doesn't stay in one place are hardly true. It's just the house of Baba Yaga."

Rosetta spit her soup. "Baba Yaga?" She stammered in fright. "As...as in... _the Baba Yaga_? Chicken-legged walking house and child-killer witch?"

"Oh." The young Batrishan-fairy hybrid exchanged glances with her mother. "She must be half-Russian. Only the Russian fear Baba Yaga."

"Baba is just a misunderstood loner," Periwinkle reassured Rosetta. "Bartok saw that in her when he first met her."

"What about Baba Yaga?"

Someone had just spoken from the doorway, nearly making Dwight and Anaïs jump in fright since they were the two pilgrims closest to the doorway. They made way for a figure to step in with slow steps. He looked like a man in his late twenties or early thirties and his skin was stuck between albino white and deathly pale. When creatures are albino, the only other color you'll see in them are a sort of salmon pink color and that was the color of his eyes. He wore a good-quality red brown vest over a white medieval blouse, dark brown medieval trousers, and matching dark leather boots. His long, wispy hair reached the tip of his shoulders and where as white as a pile of spider webs in an attic. Bat ears and wings stood out of his body, only he kept his wind folded down like a cape.

"Bartok Ashiva Rex..." Tristan went down on one knee and bowed before the albino Batrishan. "Your Majesty, it's an honor."

"I abdicated eras ago. Have those pathetic Batrishan priests taught nothing?" Bartok rolled his eyes as he put down a bag full of purchased on the floor and went to embrace Periwinkle with a kiss. "Sorry I'm late, but the blacksmith was about to close his shop for the day in order to attend his mother's funeral."

 _'Jasmine!' Bartok cried as he watched a young Middle Eastern woman get impaled by a sword._ The sudden vision made Rosetta stop taking the last sip of soup and accidently drop her spoon. The sound it made as it hit the wooden floor caught attention, especially from Bartok, who only raised his eyebrow.

"Don't get mad, Dad! I gave her soup to appease her hungry stomach," his daughter said instantly as Bartok walked towards Rosetta, who could feel Eglantine putting her protective hands on the girl's shoulders.

"It's not a crime to feed hungry children, Hermia. If it was the case, I'd be in prison by now," Bartok said half-jokingly. He bent his knees down in a near yoga pose so that he could be at the same level of Rosetta, who was still sitting on her chair, and look at her with curiosity. "A daughter of Anubis, eh? I've run into descendants of the mummification god but all of them were boys," he said. "I don't suppose you've met your godly parent yet, have you? Most demigods either don't meet them or wait until they're twelve to do so and you seem you seem like you're, what, close to ten?"

"I'm eight," Rosetta said, "and I already met my dad because I _live_ with him and my mother."

"Since when do gods live with mortals?" Isaac frowned.

"Isaac! It is wrong to question those from above!" Aaron chided Isaac by hitting the Reeve on the head with his shepherd's crook.

"Don't blame his ignorance, my good Parson," Bartok said. "Most mortals don't know that, with the amount of believers decreasing ever since Rome began to rise, the Egyptian Gods had to go in hiding and place their kingdom under the roots of a pyramid. To keep the blood of the gods alive, each god would get a mortal spouse they'd choose from five mortals stripped away from their homes by the Egyptian priests every century..."

"I beg your pardon, but I'm not sure we understand," Maurice said. Without anyone noticing, he had pulled out a small journal and was now taking notes.

"He's saying that the Egyptian Gods all have to wait for their priests to go out into the mainland every 100 years and come back with kidnapped mortals, usually five candidates so that the god who was getting himself a mortal would pick which one pleased him the most, marry the mortal, and have babies with it while the other four got put in the slave market," Rosetta explained.

"How barbaric!" Eglantine exclaimed.

"How do you think my parents met? Like the other gods, my dad had to pick a mortal spouse to create offspring every 100 years, but he got bored because he wanted someone who'd actually _love_ him and not because they were in for marrying a god. Almost all the other gods except his foster mom Isis didn't like or trust my dad because his biological father was Seth, the Egyptian god of evil. So when my mom got kidnapped as a spouse candidate and got rejected by Horus after she slapped him, Dad chose her only so that he could help her escape rather than 'teach that mortal some proper manners' as he claimed to the gods he would."

"And is this the part where they get the Stockholm syndrome and run off together back to her home?" Tristan asked.

"Add the part of my dad sealing the entrance of the kingdom so that the other gods wouldn't chase them, literally banishing himself from the home he ever knew, and yeah, that's pretty much what happened."

Some sniffing was heard and they saw that Anaïs was crying. "That is _the_ most romantic story I ever heard," she said as she continued to cry in her tissue.

"Mr. Bartok," Rosetta spoke to the albino bat, "I made a stupid mistake and I have to go back home. It's...complicated to explain, but you're supposed to be the one who knows about the Canterbury Shrine..."

"We're all pilgrims planning to go there," Tristan explained, "and we ran into Rosie after she accidently got herself teleported away from her home. Your wife just said that the shrine is actually the house of Baba Yaga..."

"It _is_ the house of Baba Yaga. The Canterbury Shrine never existed," Bartok said. "Baba was so used to being alone and rejected my humans that she decided to keep humans away by scaring them with stories and maps of fools going on life-risking quests to find a holy place that never stayed in one place. Those who ended up using her maps and find her house got jinxed by her into going away with spelled thoughts of finding the Canterbury Shrine and getting their problems solved."

"So we came all the way for nothing?" Isaac shouted angrily as he pounded on the table. "We left all our homes behind, ditched two Dark Curses, and went through a perilous journey just to be told that everything we traveled for **was fake**?"

"Isaac, calm down..." Harry said.

"Easy for you to say! Have you forgotten what we all wanted from the shrine? Because I don't! More gold for me, you promoted to Friar and running your own monastery, an Academy position for Maurice, more services to help the poor for both Aaron and Eglantine, a new husband for Anaïs, a museum to put Dwight's tapestries, and avenging the deceased Batrishans for Tristan! All this because we let a silly human child ruin everything for us with her visionary claims!"

"ISAAC!" the seven other pilgrims exclaimed in shock. Whimpering was heard and when they turned their heads, they saw that Rosetta was crying.

"A silly human child..." She said. "So that's how you all see me now, isn't it? I never asked to come here! I just wanted to go back home to my family, not ruin everyone's hopes and dreams because my advanced foreseeing powers aren't always as clear as I want them to be!"

"No, child, I'm sure they didn't mean it like that!" Periwinkle tried to reassure her, but Rosetta didn't listen through her tears.

"I actually began to see you all as my friends and part of my family, even that annoying pig, during this trip, but you're no better than my parents or anyone else back in Storybrooke! Only Fidget was my real friend and he was better than the whole lot of you while he's a villain!" She broke out of Eglantine's hold and ran out of the room. " **I never should have read CANTERBURY TALES!** "

"Rosie, wait!" Tristan shouted.

"It's not what you think!" Dwight failed to reach her with his eight hands.

"Rosie, please!" Eglantine begged, but it was too late: Rosetta had managed to get out of the cottage and get lost in the sudden rain.

"I hope you're proud of yourself!" Maurice said angrily at Isaac while and the other six pilgrims, along with Periwinkle and Hermia, ran out to search for Rosie. Guilt consumed the Reeve as he left to join them while Bartok stood paralyzed in the living room. How come she knew the dark Batrishan?

He prepared to leave as well until his foot caught something. Bartok picked up the parchment, which was none other than the scroll had found back in the Batrishan Sanctuary and accidently dropped it out of her pocket when she ran out of the cottage. He looked at the scroll, which had a diagram of an upcoming eclipse shadowing a town and a text written in Batrishan dialect.

"' _The race through time you must take to when the fate of balance must have begun! The race through fate will be at stake and soon shall rise the Evil One._ '" Bartok gasped at the mention of the god who decimated his people as he continued to read. "' _After three centuries, the sun will darken again. From the underground the maze shall rise. Through crystals shall be heard the goddess and Batrishans scream in pain. From his crown, the Prince of Darkness' evil will terrorize. The cursed dagger will bond with the dragon, who seeks her enslaver's demise and loyalty of her heir. The world's town will face the agony as darkness, evil, and malevolence rule the air.'_ Batrishans...Prince of Darkness..." He gasped when a theory hit him and he flew out of the cottage, the scroll safely tucked in his vest. "ROSIE!"


	24. Finding A Way Back To Storybrooke

Race Through Time:

Finding A Way Back To Storybrooke

Tears blinded Rosetta as she ran under the rain that showered the stoned roads.

 _A silly human girl_ , the words hammered Rosetta's head as her feet ran into puddles of water that soaked her shoes and under raindrops that threatened to give her a cold.

"I don't believe in anything anymore!" Rosetta reached the catwalk where the pilgrims had placed their boat. Unfortunately, it's not safe to run on wet plank, especially when you're near a big mass of water and you aren't a good swimmer, because that's what ended up happening to Rosetta as her foot slipped on a wooden plank and dragged her body into the river. She tried her best at attempting to swim, but the volume of water was so high that her small limbs grew tired and led her to falling unconscious. Her body began to drown in the depth until something dove its head down and grabbed her in its swan-like arms.

"I got her!" Eglantine put Rosetta on her back and swam back to the catwalk, where the other pilgrims and the Bartok family were now gathered. Eglantine, against all rules of religious modesty, had removed her cape and dress and swum in her full swan body in order to bring Rosetta back to the pilgrims.

"She's ice cold!" Maurice exclaimed after Eglantine handed Rosetta to him so that she could get back in her clothes. His hands touched the child's cheeks and collarbone. "Her breathing's weakening! If she doesn't recover soon, she'll die!"

"This is all my fault," Isaac said guiltily. "If I weren't so biased..."

"You admitted your faults, which is enough for forgiving." Aaron rested his hand on the Reeve's shoulder as they watched Periwinkle and Hermia attempt to wake up Rosetta with their magic.

"It doesn't work!" Hermia said. "A demigod born from a death god can only be saved from death by his or her godly parent's blood and the magic of an ancient monotheist god follower... Only her father Anubis can use his blood!"

"And as much as I hate to admit it, Fidget is the only living Batrishan I know who's born from the Batrishan priests." Bartok grimaced. "I need to take her back to Storybrooke. Tristan, judging by the events turning ahead of us, I'll need you to come with me."

Tristan nodded in understanding. Bartok turned to the pilgrims. "I'm sorry you had your pilgrimage ruined." He picked up Rosetta and carried her in his arms. "Periwinkle, Hermia, I can't leave you alone when there are the odds of me never returning. You need to come with me."

"Of course." Periwinkle held on to her husband.

"But what about the farm?" Hermia asked sadly.

"We'll take care of it," Anaïs said while she and the other six pilgrims held hands together.

"We went this far to pursue our dreams," Isaac said. "But, thanks to Rosie, we'll all be creating a new dream together."

"I'll send a message to Camberley to explain to your father why you can't return home just yet, Tristan," Dwight said.

"Thank you." Tristan gave his old friend a tearful good-bye hug.

"I just have a question," Hermia said. "How are we..." Her question got cut off when the rain stopped pouring and the water formed a vortex. They looked down at it and saw a faint image of a strange coastal town. One of its buildings had a word...

"Storybrooke," Tristan said. "Somebody must have known we needed to go there."

A groan came out of the unconscious Rosetta, who still didn't wake up. "Forget how it came, she's on fever level and that can lead to death. We have to go now!"

"FAREWELL! GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU!" the seven other pilgrims said before Bartok, his family, and Tristan flew down into the vortex as it led them to the other side.

Storybrooke.

 _How the vortex came in the first place minutes ago in Storybrooke_

Fidget was sitting on one of the benches at the docks, waiting patiently for Midnight Sparkle to come for their 'rendezvous', which was none other than a set up planned by Marion. He'd be luring the alicorn towards the docks and distracting her while Marion, Anubis, the codfish, Emma, David, and Mr. Gold would get out of their hiding places and attack Midnight Sparkle with either poppy dust or a recording of the lullaby Fidget had sung to put Amanda back to sleep. In anyway, it would put Midnight Sparkle in a state where she couldn't defend herself when the heroes finally sealed her back in Pandora's Box.

But the dark Batrishan being himself, he did have some other plans.

"You wanted to see me?"

Fidget turned his head once he heard the voice of the alicorn and found her sitting right next to him. Once again, her attire was revealing, clearly indicating her intentions to make with him, and fashioned in her motif: purple strapless top resembling a bra, black mini shorts that looked more like underwear and therefore exposed too much of her hips, and over-the-knee high heeled boots. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail...ironically.

"She's here, get ready," Marion said as se communicated with the others through her phone.

"I may have...a proposition to make," Fidget said, remaining stiff as Midnight Sparkle let her right hand's fingers crawl up his torso. As soon as she heard the word 'proposition', she squealed with excitement and tackled him down until he was pinned down on the bench and she was straddling on him.

"Definetly yes!" She said excitedly before going straight ahead to send a series of forceful kisses on the Batrishan. "So when does the ceremony take place? Right now or in a few days? Have you already decided the kind of cake and the guests? Or the amount of babies we'll be having at our honeymoon?"

"This is not something you see in women everyday," Mr. Gold remarked to David as they hid in a boat and watched through binoculars as Midnight Sparkle kept kissing Fidget, nearly putting him in a state where he could be running out of air.

"Well, then again, I _was_ nearly suffocated by a siren's kissing." David shrugged.

"Not that kind of proposition!" Fidget had had enough of Midnight Sparkle's lustful kisses sucking the breath out of his lungs, but her starting to unbutton his shirt with her magic was the last straw for him and he managed to push her off him. "But, we can arrange for it to happen...in the future."

His words interested Midnight Sparkle. "You're saying that you'd actually stay with me? That you won't put me back in the box?"

"I'm saying that I might if you'd do something for me," Fidget said.

"Anything!" Midnight Sparkle got up from the bench in excitement. She snapped her fingers and soon a series of valuable items came and went in a flash of magic. "Gold, a kingdom, slaves, or a portal to an unexplored land...I could give them all to you if you just asked!"

"Can she really do that?" Emma asked through her phone.

"Alicorns are supernatural beings," Mr. Gold said. "They can bend and twist magic as much as any Dark One can."

"I appreciate your offerings, Midnight. Really, I do." Fidget gently lowered her hands in order to keep her from doing further magic. "But even if you gave me what I wanted and I went with you, you wouldn't be happy. I've been living for centuries now with a dark, broken heart that has been avoiding death with the Elixir of Nine Lives..."

Hearing the name made Midnight Sparkle pull her hands away from him. "The Elixir...You mean, that potion that grants eternal immortality to the drinker?" Her voice sounded like it was breaking. "Fitzgerald, do you even know the price of it?"

"Living a long life at the cost of watching your loved ones die," the Batrishan answered. "I took it after believing that I could spend eternity hunting for revenge without having to pay the price since I lost all those I loved. But now I just discovered that my revenge was pointless and now all I can do is live off the rest of my life as a recluse. So ask yourself, Midnight: am I really worth your time? Am I really worth getting cursed by the Lustful Curse, a spell that you still haven't finished yet?"

Midnight Sparkle stared at him, her eyes showing a broken soul as she pulled out a green vial with an oil-colored liquid in it. The humanoid alicorn sobbed as she threw the vial onto the nearest dock, smashing the vial and spilling the content. As the liquid burned the wooden platform like acid, Midnight Sparkle continued to sob and lose balance of her legs, making her fall. Fidget grabbed her and helped her lie down on the bench while the others rushed out of their hiding places to join the two beasts.

"What's happening?" Marion asked.

"She got a severe heartbreak and it's killing her," Anubis said as he put a hand on Midnight's head. "She'll turn into dust just like all alicorns do."

"You're killing her?" David growled at Fidget. "We were supposed to put her back in Pandora's Box, not kill her!"

"Because putting her back in there would make it any better," Fidget muttered quietly.

"Th...Thank you," Midnight Sparkle coughed dust out of her mouth. "I...Cough!...I hated being there. Cough!" She held out a withering, begging to Fidget. "Please...Your condition from earlier...Ask for it...Whatever you wanted from me...Ask for it. Please! Use my last amount of magic to grant your desire!" She coughed even more.

"You're going to be alright," Emma tried to reassure the alicorn. It was pointless, because the latter was now getting her skin cracked.

"Can you return Anubis' daughter Rosetta back to Storybrooke?" Fidget asked Midnight. His question made Anubis and Marion stare at him all baffled.

"You'd return our daughter for us?" Anubis asked nearly gratefully.

"Over my dead body," Fidget snapped. "You are by far the lousiest parents I've ever seen in my entire life. I'm only getting Rosie back because she's my friend and nothing else!"

"One friend...coming...right...now..." With all the remaining strength she had left, Midnight Sparkle snapped her fingers. A vortex suddenly came into the waters of the harbor while the alicorn finally gave in and turned into a pile of dust that got blown away into the blue sky from the blowing winds created by the vortex. Four figurines flew out of the vortex that closed after them and kept flying above the port. Two of them looked like fairies while the two others...

"BATRISHANS?" Killian exclaimed.

"You mean there's more than one?" David asked.

The fairies and the Batrishans landed on the solid ground. One of the Batrishans, an albino one, was carrying a rather sick looking child in his arms.

"ROSETTA!" Anubis and Marion rushed to the Batrishan, who instantly gave Rosetta to Anubis. The god cradled his poor child in his arms. "What happened to my daughter?" he demanded.

"She nearly drowned after she ran away from an argument, milord," the other Batrishan, a tanned young fellow, said with a bow. "Only your blood and the magic of..." He got cut off when some loud inhuman hissing was heard and everyone realized that they didn't notice Fidget and the albino bat lashing at one another like wild animals.

" _You_!" the albino bat hissed.

"Long time no see, Bartok!" Fidget replied back as he got his sharp nailed hands ready.

"Hang on, you two know each other?" Killian said as he and David kept the two Batrishans from lashing at one another.

"This is the Batrishan who survived the genocide?" the tanned Batrishan frowned. "Wow. Rosetta wasn't kidding when she said he did evil deeds. He looks like he came out of Hell!"

"And you shouldn't be existing!" Fidget snapped.

"Will somebody explain what's going on?" Emma demanded.

"I can," Mr. Gold said, surprising everyone. "Fidget knew the Dark One before me, Zoso, and helped him motivate a Duke to draft children into the Ogres War, which led me to becoming the next Dark One in order to protect Baelfire. In exchange for helping my predecessor, Fidget the Bat left for the Valley Of A Thousand Whispers with a poison."

"The Valley Of A Thousand Whispers?" The youngest fairy among the newcomers asked the oldest.

"It's where your father used to live in exile after he left his people eras ago," the oldest said.

"I exiled myself there after living so many years from the Elixir Of Nine Lives and regretting the things I've seen," the albino Batrishan snarled. "My life was peaceful there and it was getting better when I was engaged to a woman I loved back then and we were going to celebrate with her father's visiting caravan." He then pointed at Fidget. "But then _he_ came along disguised as a blind beggar and blackmailed me into giving him the formula that would enable him to have the last four sips he needed to get all the eternal immortality provided by the Elixir of Nine Lives in exchange for the antidote for the poison he seemingly had used on my love's family.

"But it was a trick. They were never poisoned but affected by an herb that upset their stomachs and the real poison, the one that the Dark One Zoso gave him, was actually in the vial he claimed to contain the antidote. He ended up getting the sips he desired while my love and I unintentionally poisoned my love's family. And to coronate everything, he impaled her with his sword as a 'way of making me not pay for the elixir's price' and saying how it wasn't fair for me to have happiness with the one I loved while he lost everything!"

Everyone stared at Fidget in disbelief while the latter didn't do as much than checking to see if he hadn't broken any nail. "Would it help if I told you he was the one responsible for ruining my life?" he asked while pointing at Killian, who looked shocked at Fidget's accusation.

"NO!" Bartok said indignantly.

"Thank you for wondering if whether or not my daughter's dying here!" Anubis shouted angrily. He bit his hand and put it on Rosetta's lips, making sure that at least five drops of his blood went down her throat.

"Rosie..." Fidget ignored his argument with Bartok and rushed to Anubis' side. He touched one of Rosetta's cheeks and felt her cold skin barely getting warmer. "What happened to her?"

"Oh, like you actually cared!" Bartok snorted until he found himself being strangled and lifted of the ground by Fidget using his dark magic on him.

"BARTOK!" the oldest fairy exclaimed.

"I said WHAT HAPPENED? **ANSWER ME!** " the dark Batrishan demanded as he tightened the magic choking Bartok.

"Please, Lord Fidget!" the other Batrishan begged on his knees. "Rosie slipped and accidently fell into a river after she been accidently insulted by one of my pilgrim comrades. We barely managed to get her out, and if you don't use your magic along with her father's blood to save her, she will die!"

The adults gasped at the mention of Rosetta dying. Without hesitating, Fidget went back to Rosetta and used his magic to shield her body with a purple aura. " _Et vivifica spiritum. Et vivifica spiritum..._ " He suddenly clutched his head and his eyes began to glow in a mix of red and gold like his eyes. " _Ozivjeti i disati._ "

"What's happening?" the tanned Batrishan asked Bartok. "It's like he switched into another language to cast his spell."

" _Zivjeti i branti_ ," Fidget continued.

"I...He's speaking in Ancient Batrishan dialect!" Bartok realized. "But only a trained Batrishan priest can recite a spell so perfectly and fluently. Where did he learn?"

" _Pobunjenik_ ," Fidget finished the spell. His eyes stopped glowing and he went back to his normal senses. "What just happened?"

A small moan came out of Rosetta's mouth. The child got her colors back and opened her eyes. "Mommy...Daddy..."

"Oh, my baby!" Marion sighed as she and Anubis hugged her tightly before putting her back on the ground and letting her rush to the first person she wanted to hug after not seeing him for almost a month.

"I'm sorry I missed Tea Thursday," Rosetta apologized to Fidget as she hugged the dark Batrishan tightly more than her parents did to her.

"You being alive is more important than three cups of cold tea," he slightly joked, making Rosetta giggle a bit. Some of the others, especially Bartok, blinked at the sight of such a weird friendship.

"How are you feeling, Rosie?" the tanned Batrishan asked Rosetta after her little reunion with Fidget was over.

"Like Anaïs just sat on me." Rosetta rubbed her head until a realization hit her and she looked around. "Wait. Tristan, where are the others?"

"They stayed back in South Porthaven to live in Bartok's farm while we came back to Storybrooke with you. Your life was the priority," he said.

"But...but what about your home in Camberley?" Rosetta said. "What about your father and Dwight and all those dreams you and the other pilgrims had that I accidently ruined because it turned out that the Canterbury shrine wasn't a real thing?"

"They'll be living a new dream," Tristan shrugged. "Besides, thanks to you, there are now three pureblooded Batrishans and one halfblooded Batrishan from our civilization's past, present, and future generations who can work together to find what I've been searching for: the Evil One's child, so that we can finally avenge our people from that cursed god."

"Great. Have fun without me!" Fidget declared as he prepared to stomp away on his good peg leg.

"Why won't you help?" Bartok's daughter said. "It's your people were talking about!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" Fidget snapped. "If my _people_ wanted me to help them, then why have none of them dared to step up and tell me they existed? How come none of them were there for me when my parents abandoned me and left me in front of a human church under the rain? How come I never heard of a single Batrishan survivor during my entire life? I don't care about the Batrishans because they never cared about me! I had a fine life until I had the bomb that turned me into _this!_ " He waved at the rest of his body, specifically his handicapped parts. "And now I'm trying to readjust to a life where I have to live with the fact that I was told that everything I worked so hard for was useless, and now you dare to drop another bomb by asking me to help you avenge those who didn't give a shit about me right after I had to deal with three weeks of a friend missing and an obsessive alicorn! You can do your avenging on your own for all I care, because I won't take any part of it!" He then turned to Marion and Anubis. "And what kind of parents are you, leaving your child home alone without assuming that she could be dragged into another world where she had to learn to be independent without you nagging her?"

"Do you need a timeout?" Rosetta asked calmly.

"I need months of staying alone away from all of you. No visits, no calls, and no demands. All of you, leave me alone!" He changed tones to Rosetta and told her nicely. "I'm afraid we won't be having Tea Thursdays for a while, Rosie."

He then flew off, leaving everyone behind at the docks.


	25. This Is Definetly Not The End

Race Through Time:

This Is Definetly Not The End

The sun was setting down by the time Fidget found the place where Midnight Sparkle had morphed into a more human-like form. Where else in Storybrooke would he find on the grassy soil an eight-pointed star made out of mirror shard? Out of respect for his old foe, he waved his hand and magically created a glass statue of Midnight Sparkle in all her alicorn glory out of the glass shards he had found earlier on the grass.

"Respecting the death of Midnight?"

Fidget turned and saw that Rosie had come. She looked much different than she did before her journey with the Canterbury pilgrims. Instead of wearing the usual school clothing and tied up hair, she wore a grey medieval peasant dress, a modern black jacket with golden hieroglyph patterns, and medieval moccasins. Her black-and-red streaked hair was loose, revealing that they were almost as long as her mother's.

"Why aren't you back home with your parents?" Fidget asked as he watched her pull out a rose from her jacket and put it by the feet of the statue.

"My traveling has changed me and I wasn't the same when I got home," Rosetta said. "I instantly argued with my mom until dad but his foot down and said I needed a demigod hiatus."

"A demigod hiatus?" Fidget frowned as he and Rosetta watched the sunset reflect its last rays on the glass statue.

"It basically means cutting off your family ties for a certain amount of time. In other words, I'm not living with my parents until I feel like I'm ready to come back."

"Are you sure that you'll be able to handle yourself?"

"One of the things that I learned with the pilgrims is that I have to stop letting other people see me as the helpless little girl they see on the outside. I'm still going to school- what kind of cruel person am I?- but I'm just going to be staying away from my parents. It's like running away from home for a holiday and eventually returning."

Fidget whistled in impressment. "You seriously grew up. I will miss you." He hugged her warmly in his arms. "Looks like I'll need to find someone to substitute you for Tea Thursdays."

"Ms. Rogers' a nice lady. She's going to be my teacher for the summer classes I have to take in the next few months," Rosetta suggested.

 _Right, I forgot she could see things_ , Fidget thought.

"I heard that," Rosetta said, making Fidget chuckle. "Come one, just go ask her out."

"But do you really think I won't be offending Isabella's memory if I..." Fidget's voice trailed off, unsure to finish his sentence.

"I'm sure she won't mind you being happy." She snapped her fingers and a blue cyan smoke appeared, revealing a cell phone. "There's only one number in there. It doesn't hurt to try," she said in a sing-song voice.

Fidget grinned at her and took the phone. Once he learned the number he needed, he instantly began to dial. "Good thing that today's Sunday."

 _Meanwhile, at the sheriff's station_

"This fell out of Rosetta's pocket when she ran off after the slight accident with Isaac," Bartok said as they gathered in the sheriff's station. "What makes it curious is how in the world she managed to cover a text written in Ancient Batrishan dialect. And about the race through time, to say the least."

"How should I know where..." Tristan suddenly gasped until he slapped his forehead. "Great Scott! Rosetta was exploring one of the houses that we were resting at when Darwin kidnapped some of the other pilgrims back in the Batrishan Sanctuary!"

"Wait, what were you doing there?" Emma asked. Tristan then explained how, during his voyage with Rosetta and the other pilgrims, some of the pilgrims had been kidnapped by the warlock Darwin and held hostage in the ruins of the Batrishan Sanctuary in exchange for the map leading to Canterbury.

"And after Rosetta managed to escape Darwin, who died in the end from a building demolition, she said she had a fogged vision involving you," Tristan told Bartok. "I should have asked her if she found anything else."

"Rosetta's developing her instincts of tricking others," Anubis sighed as he pinched his nose. "The days when I curse myself for being the son of Seth! Deception is definetly a characteristic in his side of the family!"

"Are you sure it's about the race through time, Dad?" Hermia asked as she got a look at the paper. "The prophecy detailing the end of the world?"

"'After three centuries, the sun will darken again'," Bartok quoted from the scroll. "About 300 years ago, before the Genocide occurred, the Evil One raped one of the Batrishan Priestesses and she died while giving birth to his offspring precisely on the day when the eclipse came. Judging by the prophecy, I'd say that the Evil One will make a reappearance on his missing child's 300th birthday, which should be coming somewhere this August. That is, if the child is still alive."

"But how _do_ we know if that child is still alive and going to be on our side?" Killian asked.

"We don't, that's the problem," Tristan admitted. "All the Batrishans who miraculously survived the Evil One's wrath have tried in vain to search every scrap of land they could encounter in the hopes of finding him or her. For all we know, the child could have been killed by wild animals or humans as soon as it was discovered or lived a life of a normal being until death took him or her, whether it left a legacy or not."

"We should still be cautious," Mr. Gold warned. "Demigods are usually creatures with unimaginable power that are born to gods when the latters least expect it. But if an ancient god intended to bring to life a creature as such through careful consideration for evil purposes that will destroy all life, that cannot be a good sign."

"He makes a point." Bartok nodded. "The priestess who died from giving birth to the Evil One's child was none other than Svjetla, a distant cousin of mine. If the Batrishan Priests hadn't been formed to govern the Batrishans after I abdicated and left the throne without a true heir, Svjetla would have been the ruling queen of the Batrishan."

"Which could mean that whoever the Evil One's child is would be the rightful king or queen of the Batrishans," Periwinkle concluded.

"Precisely. But judging by the fact that the prophecy states the reign of the Prince of Darkness once he gets the crown during the events, we can only assume that the Evil One has, or maybe had, a son among the Batrishans."

"And what of the part mentioning a cursed dagger and a dragon?" David asked.

"A dragon is not our priority right now," Anubis said sharply. "The plans of conquest of a god can never be ignored, especially if that god is malevolent and desires destruction. Whoever the Evil One is, he is certainly a god that neither I nor my peers must dare to identify, and if his intentions are as bad as the race through time states, then we'll know where he's going during the eclipse." He put a finger on the illustration that the scroll depicted, the drawing that showed the eclipse shadowing a town. At first, the heroes frowned at the god, not understanding what he was saying, until they had a better look at the drawing and gasped when they saw that the town looked familiar.

Because that town was Storybrooke.

 _8pm at the Dutchman's Teapot_

"Welcome to the _Dutchman's Teapot_ , where we make your day full of sunshine with our special tea and food," Aunt Dalma, the restaurant manager, said in her Creole accent as she welcomed Fidget at the reception.

"Good evening," he said politely. "I have a dinner appointment here with a Ms. Rogers. Do you know if she's made a reservation yet?"

"Usually it's the man who escorts the lady on their date, not the lady who waits for her fellow at the table already." Auntie Dalma pointed towards the large room full of tables and chairs, some of them being occupied by customers, and just three tables away from the restaurant' stage sat Theresa Rogers at a table covered by a blue marlin colored tablecloth and decorated with a lit candle.

"Thank you," Fidget told Auntie Dalma. He took a deep breath and walked through the space made by the tables. The other customers didn't notice him, mostly because he managed to hide his wings under a knee-length purple jacket and black uniform, his peg leg with a pair of black boots, and his ears under a fedora hat. In other words, he looked normal to them.

Fortunately, Theresa saw through his disguise.

"I'm glad you could make it," she said, blushing a bit at the sight of Fidget. "You're very good at suiting up for special occasions."

"So do you," Fidget said as he kissed her hand in a gentlemanly way. It was true that she was a stunning beauty tonight: for such an occasion, she wore a short, strapless black lace dress, black ankle strapped high heeled sandals, and blue diamond jewelry on her ears and neck. Her blonde hair and magenta streak were pulled back in a French braid bun, making her green eyes really stand out.

"Have things worked out with the alicorn?" Theresa asked while handing Fidget the menu as soon as he sat down on the chair facing her.

"It has," he said. "Although I must confess that these past events have really tired me. I'll be able to...catch my breaths for the next few months. You might as well call it a hiatus." His eyes darted at the menu.

"You know, if you need company during your hiatus, my doors will be welcome to you whenever you need it." Theresa smiled.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for our usual Sunday poetic lectures," Auntie Dalma said from the stage. "Today's first poem is _Pan's Pursuit For Syringa_."

"Sounds perfect." Fidget smiled at Theresa. Their hands met one another as they ordered from the menu and listened to Auntie Dalma reciting from _Pan's Pursuit For Syringa._

 _In this grove of mysteries that I travel,_

 _Away from the nearest battle,_

 _I find you, the definition of beauty,_

 _You, Syringa, a nymph who charms me so cruelly._

At the fairies' monastery, Bartok and his family were getting settled in their new quarters. While Hermia was getting ready to go to bed, Periwinkle joined her husband and gave him a reassuring kiss as he watched the starry night with doubts.

 _Oh, how your skin is as white as my mother's milk!_

 _Your lips are red as wine, just like Bacchus' drink!_

 _In your smile, I see Aphrodite's pearly marbles._

 _In its voice, I hear the angels' songs of marvels._

 _Syringa, how I want to pursue and taste thee through a kiss!_

 _How I'd be ready to chase you down the deepest pits,_

 _Above the highest mountains, across the largest seas,_

 _And defy the walls of breezes and trees,_

 _Just so that I can hold you in my arms_

 _And drown in your form._

On the top of the same hill where Fidget once stood when he first arrived in Storybrooke, Rosetta sat on the soft grass in a lotus pose, meditating above the distant lights of the entire town at night while Morpheus' cloak made of night and stars shielded Storybrooke as some of their residents began to go to bed.

 _But alas, my love! Your heart is harder than thy skin!_

 _All passion is gone from where it should have been!_

 _And now here you stand, you precious flower,_

 _On the grass, like a purple blooms tower_

 _While my heart bleeds with sadness!_

 _How the world kills me with all its malice!_

 _Will I ever find joy, whether it comes from the flute or pan,_

 _Or will I keep crying at lilacs, flowers of my love who ran?_

 _Somewhere in the Underground_

" **Finally, Storybrooke has three Batrishans representing those vermins' civilization's past, present, and future** ," the Evil One told the Masked Girl as they observed through a crystal ball the images of the three Batrishans' silhouettes without seeing their actual faces. " **One of them must either lead me to the whereabouts of my son should he still be alive or even actually be him**." He turned to the Masked Girl. " **You have done well, Romana.** "

The Masked Girl, or should we say Romana, Maleficent's disappeared granddaughter, nodded through her mask. "The pieces are finally coming together, Your Majesty. Soon enough, the ultimate power shall be yours by the time the eclipse arrives." _And my own plan will come to fruition,_ she thought while hiding a sneer under her mask. _Soon, I will be getting what I want, you old fool._

" **The Batrishan and the wretched Pale Face will be mine!** " the Evil One said. " **And the universe will fall under the rule of me and my labyrinth!** " The god laughed cruelly as he walked out of the room and stood proudly on the balcony of his castle that gave him a perfect view of the maze that surrounded his castle like a fortress.

THE END

Next, on ONCE UPON A TIME. When past meets present...

Odin: _Your quest will be to..._

Fidget: (to Theresa) _I am ready to finally have a peaceful, normal life...with you._

...And dark truths meet destiny...

Lily: Romana might be here in Storybrooke!

Romana: (as she removes her mask) _Ensuring the prophecy's fulfillment for_ my _benefit and that my enslaver's blood is shed matters to me more than a pitiful family reunion._

Jareth: You _are what I desire._

Killian: _Swan, this can't be._

...Things just won't be the same!

Anonymous Batrishan: _All hail the new king of the Batrishans!_

(Crowd cheering)

Follow the adventure, when ONCE UPON A TIME runs through twists and turns and meets LABYRINTH, in FACING DESTINY, and follow the spin-off series retelling the history of Fidget the Bat in FIDGET, BATRISHAN PRINCE OF DARKNESS.


End file.
